MORGAN HILL (KRON) — As of Thursday afternoon, Anderson reservoir near Morgan Hill is at 99.7 percent of full capacity.
That’s actually down quite a bit from last week when excess water was gushing over the spillway.
On Thursday, only a trickle was flowing over the spill way.
The surging waterfall downstream had gone quiet.
The danger of flooding along Coyote Creek has passed but unfortunately, there is another problem here.
Anderson dam was built back in the 1950s.
In 2007, seismic testing here showed that in the event of a major earthquake, a 7.3 or greater on the nearby Calvaras fault, the damn could fail.
That could send a wall of water into Morgan Hill and possibly as far away as San Jose.
Since then, the Santa Clara Valley Water District has been required to keep the reservoir at a maximum of 68 percent of full capacity.
As of Thursday, it was sitting at 99.7 percent.
The water district has estimated it could take up to nine weeks or longer to get the reservoir back down to where it should be.
If we get more rain or the snow in the Sierra melts too fast this spring, it could take even longer to drain the lake.
For the people living downstream from the dam, like Scott Gill, the earthquake danger is unsettling.
He has been working on getting earthquake and flood insurance.
Fixing the problem won’t be cheap and it won’t happen soon.
The Santa Clara Valley Water District projects it will cost over 400 million dollars to fix the dam and work isn’t scheduled to begin until 2024.