Title
Consider adopting a release schedule for Nacimiento and San Antonio reservoirs for 2025. (Staff Presenting: Peter Kwiek)
Report
RECOMMENDATION:
It is recommended that the Monterey County Water Resources Agency Board of Directors:
Adopt a Release Schedule for Nacimiento and San Antonio Reservoirs for 2025.
SUMMARY/DISCUSSION:
In most years, continuous reservoir releases are made during the “conservation season” (April-October) to optimize Salinas Valley groundwater recharge as well as Salinas River Diversion Facility (SRDF) operations. These conservation releases are guided by a schedule developed each year in late winter to early spring by staff to approximate the expected sequence of reservoir withdrawals that fully accounts for a complex set of obligations, constraints and, to the extent possible, hydrologic conditions.
Key obligations include annual withdrawal limits and conditions-based prescribed flows supportive of federally listed species. Both are stipulated in the water rights that authorize the Agency to store, withdraw and re-divert waters of the state within the Nacimiento, San Antonio and Salinas River watersheds. Constraints are of physical, administrative and environmental nature. Physical constraints include elevation-dependent limits on methods and rates of releases as well as safe operating limits of release mechanisms; administrative constraints include guaranteed water allotments established by contractual agreements. Minimum required releases, required lagoon bypass flows, as well as limits on release rate changes are among the environmental constraints accounted for in the development of the annual release schedule.
The Agency has made releases during 12 of the 16 summer conservation seasons since the Salinas River Diversion Facility (SRDF) began operating in 2010. Two extended droughts resulted in insufficient reservoir levels to operate from 2014-2016 and in 2022. More recently, 2023 and 2024 marked a return to wet conditions ...
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