Although rain briefly sprinkled the South Bay and the Peninsula last week, the dry start to 2022 does not bode well for the Los Altos area.
Showers Feb. 22 barely made a dent in the overall local water supply. According to Valley Water’s sensor at Westwind Community Barn in Los Altos Hills, the rainfall in the early hours of that morning – the first rain detected since Jan. 4 – totaled only 0.04 inches.
“We’ve had the worst January and February in history,” Valley Water board chair Gary Kremen told the Town Crier in an interview last week.
Valley Water declared a state of emergency last June, and according to a Feb. 23 statement from Kremen, “Our current situation shows we are still in a drought emergency.”
Kremen noted the county depends on imported water, but the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation last week reported only 25% of its normal water allocation from the federal Central Valley Project, with further reductions ahead unless there’s more precipitation.
Kremen pointed to a 15% water use reduction goal for the county. He said county users reduced their water consumption by 8% between June and December 2021.
“We thank those who have done their part, but we need to do more,” he said. “We must all make conservation a way of life.”
When asked why people should be concerned about water supply when their tap is still running, Kremen said, “That’s the equivalent of saying, ‘I’m in a plane whose engines have gone out, and we’re at 1,000 feet. But, hey, we’re still in the air.’”
Valley Water, formally known as the Santa Clara Valley Water District, supplies water for many of the county’s nearly 2 million residents.
For more information on conservation programs for residents and businesses, visit watersavings.org.
