Water districts stuffing Kern River water in every nook and cranny they can

April 1, 2019
by Lois Henry
Lois Henry

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The good news is that not a drop of Kern River water is going into the California Aqueduct to fill Southern California taps.

Yet.

But water managers are keeping an eagle eye on the snowpack and the weather hoping there are no sudden moves from either in the near future.

A warm rain or rapid run-up in temps could bring a huge slug of water down and overwhelm ongoing efforts to squirrel it away, said Kern River Watermaster Dana Munn.

“It’s amazing,” he said. “It’s such a big water year and we’ve managed to push water into all these places.”

During the last big water year, 2010-2011, a lot of recharge ponds hadn’t been built or weren’t operating at full capacity.

So this year is a bit of a mystery to Munn, an engineer who likes lots of data to run models and make predictions.

But so far, so good.

SJV Water is an independent, nonprofit news site dedicated to covering water in the San Joaquin Valley. Get inside access to SJV Water by becoming a member.

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