December 2, 2016

• Lake Cachuma at 7% Capacity

  When I go to Santa Barbara, one of the things I enjoy is a drive over the mountains behind town and to the lake that supplies Santa Barbara with its water.  For the last 5 years, the area has been in severe drought, along with the rest of the State, and the lake has been diminishing in the amount of water available.  There is some water that comes in from other parts of the State, purchased by a consortium of water districts including Santa Barbara, Lompoc, Solvang, Santa Ynez, Carpinteria, Montecito, etc.  The daily infflow of water from these State water sources is less than the amount used in one day by Santa Barbara, and as it is deposited into the lake, there has been considerable evaporation.  The City is working on rebuilding its desalination plant, originally built in 1988, but never used.  That was to have been completed during the summer, so that it would up and running by now, supplying about 1/3 of the water used each day.  The latest update is that the desal plant will bu started in early March -- in tests, 1 of 4 units blew up; then the recycled water being used along with sea water was renovated during the summer, but the pipes used have been found to be incapable of holding the pressure required when the desal plant is added to the mix.  The lake is now at 7% capacity, a level at which the water in the lake is called the "dead pool, or non-potable water.   The water level has dropped 100 feet since the last time the lake was full!  State water is still being pumped in, and evaporation is less than during the summer; for a short while, the city is able to use what water is available.    I wanted to see what the lake looks like now, under these conditions.

  The first viewpoint stop we made was at a County recreation park a mile or so upstream from the dam.  This park does not allow swimming, but the lake is planted with trout, and there is a popular boat launch within the park.  I stood at the top of the boat launch ramp and took a few photos.  The normal water level is at the bottom of the paved area, where you can see the metal bridge -- and now that is only half way to the lake bottom below!.

    

    

  Water is carried from the lake through mountains in an unlined tunnel, the intake for which is about 2 miles upstream from the dam.  In the next shot, you can see the pipe that carries the water now from a pump near the dam through the two miles to the tunnel inlet.  The small white posts mark the 'route' of that pipe.

  

  Within the orange fencing is a barge with the pump that works to send the water up the lake and then straight up to the tunnel inflow.

  

  

  Back at the top of the boat launch, you can still look along the lake level and see the lining that once surrounded the area just below the water line.  At the far end of this area, behind a small store, there are a group of yurts for rent.

  

    

  From there, we drove around the campground that is located on a peninsula in the lake, and stopped on the other side, looking downstream to the dam.

     

  

  On the left side of the dam (the center of this shot) is the spillway, with 4 gates through which water flows when the lake is full.  Currently the gates are raised and lowered ao they don't rust in place, but water doesn't flow through them except for the State water being imported from other more northern locations.

  

  Turning one more turn to the left, a shot of an inlet creating the campground peninsula.  There used to be water to the top of the white band across the center of the shot.  Now, roads have begun to appear where the rangers and dam staff have driven in their daily work.

  

  Before moving on, I took one last pair of shots showing the back side of the dam.

    

  My next post will show the shots I took from a vista point just downstream from the dam -- a vista point that I have stopped at during all my forays to view the dam and the lake.

  • 8:03 pm
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