Drought-causing storms this season have presented California with priceless opportunities on two ecological fronts.

We are already practically drowning in the water and the heavy runoff of record Sierra snow has not even begun.

So:

First, have good

a

previously unimaginable amounts of water to generate clean hydropower. That means burning less dirty fossil fuel and less chance of power outages.

Hydro is an essentially overlooked benefit of our three month immersion.

Second, we can now seriously pursue the ambitious task of refilling our depleted underground reservoirs, the sinking aquifers that have been irresponsibly pumped over for decades, especially by farmers.

But it’s not as easy as

It

may seem. Water doesn’t just seep everywhere. Sometimes it just evaporates unused, as probably in the huge newly reborn Tulare Lake in the southern San Joaquin Valley.

These storms wreaked havoc in many regions, breaking levees, inundating crops, inundating residential areas and washing away roads.

But at least for this year they have been a godsend in the fight against climate change and our effort to increase clean energy production, weaning ourselves from global warming natural gas to generate electricity.

And there will be a lot more water to replenish aquifers, especially in the San Joaquin Valley, where hundreds of wells have run dry and the land has sunk dramatically, causing pipes and canals to burst.

We’ve been dreaming-

by

water richness this spring after a three-year drought. It is now up to governments and utilities to take advantage of this.

As of Tuesday, statewide snowpack was an astonishing 241% of normal for the date. For the northern Sierra, it was doubly normal. For the southern Sierra it was triple.

Reservoirs quickly filled up. Shasta was at 84% capacity, Oroville at 83% and San Luis at 99% after falling dangerously low in

the

case. There will be a little push to make room for warm weather runoff as the snow melts.

For most large dams, hydropower generation will be an unexpected bonus. But hydropower is not a top priority for federal and state water projects. Reservoirs are built at a high cost, primarily for water users for snowmelt storage and flood control.

However, there is usually a suitable convergence of crop irrigation and hydropower generation needs

in the summer when farms are thirsty for water and the power grid is under pressure from air conditioners running at full blast. Large water discharges from dams can serve both purposes, especially when the sun goes down and solar energy decreases.

Hydropower at major government dams could generate as much as 20% of California’s electricity this year. Plus utilities like Southern California Edison and Pacific Gas

other

& Electric operate smaller dams specifically for generating hydropower.

According to the California Energy Commission, a large hydroelectric plant produced 14% of California’s electricity in 2020. Nuclear energy accounted for 11%. All clean energy, including solar and wind, yielded 59%. The rest came from fossil fuels that emit greenhouse gases

S

mainly natural gas.

Hydro’s share of California’s electricity was just 6% in 2015.

We have a better carbon footprint this year. It will help meet our climate goals. We can burn less polluting natural gas, says Lindsay Buckley, spokesperson for the energy committee.

And there will also be better reliability of electric power. It’s a big problem.

Presumably

there will be

be less power outages during high demand

S

for electricity.

That will That will

are the responsibility of the utilities.

Politicians and water officials have discussed groundwater

Yak Yak

about recharging the drained aquifers over decades. And we haven’t seen much progress.

Okay, we had a drink. But that’s over. It’s time to see what’s really possible.

The truth is that California was the last western state to regulate groundwater. That finally happened in 2014. But then-Gov. Jerry Brown and the Legislature have delayed full implementation until the 2040s.

Gov. Gavin Newsom recently tried to speed up charging by cutting the red tape for farmers and local agencies who wanted to direct runoff into flooded fields and sink it into the ground.

But some soil is good for that, like in San Joaquin Valley’s Chowchilla Basin, and some is bad, said Andrew Ayres, an energy and water expert at the Public Policy Institute of California.

One of the worst is the vast Tulare Lake. It disappeared long ago when dams and levies were built. The lake dried up and became fertile farmland. Now Tulare Lake has resurfaced and the crops have been flooded.

Don’t expect it to be a boon to the aquifer, Ayres says.

Tulare Basin has a lot of clay, he explains. That water stays for a long time and evaporates. The soil is not conductive for charging the aquifer.

Flooded rice paddies are also not good for charging, he says.

But luckily they are great for migrating waterfowl.

A reader emailed

and said

that to speed up charging, the state would simply have to pump runoff through the hundreds of abandoned water wells in the San Joaquin Valley.

But that’s impractical, says Paul Gosselin, who is responsible for groundwater management for the State Department of Water Resources.

First, abandoned wells are sealed, he says. Secondly, a lot of valley water is contaminated by fertilizers

toxins

and it would require a massive cleanup. That’s all expensive.

There is a filtering process for water that naturally seeps into the soil, says Gosselin.

The state has poured about $100 million into charging projects over the past two years, he reports.

There is talk in the legislature about placing one

suggested

water bond proposal maybe $4 billion

-or-

$5 billion at the 2024 ballot.

Don’t bother unless there is serious money to replenish groundwater basins, our largest natural reservoirs by far.