SANTA CLARA COUNTY (KRON) — Parts of the Bay Area are still drying out from last week’s big soaker.
The numbers are in and it turns out area reservoirs got a nice boost from all that rain.
One of the larger reservoirs in the Santa Clara valley, Lexington, in the mountains above Los Gatos is now at just over 40 percent of capacity.
That’s a roughly 5 percent increase over a week ago.
It represents a good start for the year.
Marty Grimes of the Santa Clara Valley Water District had this to say:
“Our reservoir levels are up to about the 96 percent of the 20 year average. Our ground levels have improved over the last year because of the good savings that the community has achieved as well as the ground water recharge that we’ve done.”
Ground water recharge is when runoff from the rain and strategic releases from those reservoirs seeps into the underground aquifer, like money in the bank, for use when the reservoirs, imported water from the Sierra and other sources runs low.
But water managers offer a word of caution.
“We’ve seen years like this when you have a good start and then January and February turn out really dry so we’re still encouraging people to continue saving. We are still asking for savings of 20 percent in Santa Clara County,” Grimes said.
It turns out most South Bay consumers actually conserved as much as 27-percent, which means those same reservoirs that are now collectively about 43 percent full, had some ‘carry over,’ and did not go completely dry last summer, like some did the year before.
It’s hoped those good habits will also carry over into next year.
“People have made permanent changes. A lot of people have changed out their landscape to a permanently California efficient landscape, which is great. People fixed leaks which is great. Changed out toilets and clothes washers that were inefficient so all those will have long term benefits,” according to Grimes.