Day

June 18, 2022
Over time, the median actual flow to San Francisco Bay in the ecologically critical winter and spring months has declined to less than half of the unimpaired runoff. This bar chart divides actual inflow (the amount that actually made it to the Bay) and unimpaired runoff (the inflow to the Bay that would occur if there were no dams or diversions) into quintiles from wettest to dry, and marks years drier than 2015 (roughly, the driest 2% of years) as “super-critically dry” years. Over the last 54 years, “super-critically dry” runoff conditions in the Bay’s watershed occurred naturally only once, in 1977, but the Estuary received runoff volumes in the super-critical range in 22 years, or 40% of the time. Overall, flow volumes characteristic of the driest 20% of years now occur more than half the time as a result of storage and diversion of runoff for consumptive uses. Source: The Bay Institute, based on data from California Department of Water Resources.
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Jun

Defining Unimpaired Flows

For the second time in four years, a proposal for a voluntary agreement between agencies and water contractors on flows into and through the Delta from the San Joaquin and Sacramento rivers and their tributaries is wending its way through the State Water Resources Control Board. The proposal, which would replace the regime outlined in the Board’s most recent update to the Bay-Delta Plan, calls for substantially less water remaining in the system than the update, but comparing the two requires understanding some terminology, specifically the concept of “unimpaired flows.” In 2018 the State Board adopted Phase 1 of the Bay-Delta Plan update, calling for San Joaquin River inflows to the Delta of 40% of unimpaired flow; a framework for...
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