Lake Tahoe: Front Page

        The Chronicle newsies love Lake Tahoe: they publish photos routinely in their paper.  Helps circulation, and boosts interest in the Bay Area(Time to go skiing?).   The related topic was the beautiful weather: clear skies and higher than normal temperatures around the Lake.  The adjacent photo clearly showed a flat, calm water surface, cloudless blue sky, and frolicking visitors enjoying the outdoors.   But the theme was not recreation but the season's lack of snow and its impact on the near term for statewide residents.
       It's all about the water:  Tahoe has lots of it and will continue to hold lots of it despite a dearth of precipitation throughout the state.   All those billions of gallons hiding under the azure surface will stay put.  What are people worried about?  The water just sits there, waiting, evaporating, trickling out of the lake via the Truckee River, and providing necessary life support to about half the residents in the basin.  Now many communities around the state have reasons to be concerned, but not Tahomans or any West Shore locals.   Our deep wells tap into adjacent aquifers that in turn result from the the big blue puddle.
      So, there is no snow on the Sierra peaks around Tahoe, but winter has just begun and there's lots of time left to have some rain/snow.  That pesky high pressure area that hovers over the West Coast just might decide to move.  Yesterday, I read in the Farmers Almanac  that this January is supposed to be very wet in the Northwest USA.  Yes, including California.  Not a scientific journal, but a folksy compilation of oddball facts and items of local interest.  
      The writer of the Chronicle's story interviewed some West Shore locals at the West Shore cafe and the Homewood Ski REsort for on the scene input.  Guess what?  Business is off and skiers have yet to make their presence felt.  Hmmmm.  Is this not obvious?

The Coming Drought

      State Water Resources people are now beginning their run up to: water rationing!  Get ready for all the dire predictions.  The print media will roll out all the usual scarecrows that will foreshadow the coming year: dead lawns(Oh, no!), dry swimming pools, dead fish, no fish, go fish; sad farmers, and, of course, severe penalties for those who abuse water.  Yes, your car will get dirty and stay dirty; you will always shower with another person(remember all those jokes about showering w/ friends to save water and be clean?  Actually, showering a deux is always fun-great exercise,too-jostling for the best position, reaching for the soap, etc.,etc.
       Then there's the neighborhood water watchers-those little people who come out of the woodwork in a suspected emergency.   They know best and they want you to know best, or else.   Rates will be temporarily raised to discourage indiscriminant usage.   Oh, the joys of living in the subtropical West where deserts exist.  Or have we forgotten?  Why is the West littered with dammed rivers?   Why are there canals crisscrossing the landscape?   Why are there water districts with rules and boards and taxes and winners and losers?   Because of 6 months of dry season and 3 months of wet season and some variations on the schedule every year.

         The great writer, Wallace Stegner, wrote the classic Angle Of Repose about the American West.  Central to his characters and the landscape was: water.  Early settlers soon discovered the vagaries of rainfall throughout the West, especially west of the Rocky Mountains, south of the Columbia River basin.  Thus began the search for reliable water supplies.   Explorers marked water sources, explored rivers, lakes, and mountain streams.  Maps depicted the river systems, and farmers, politicians, and real estate speculators all took notes.  Water wars broke out as farmers confronted ranchers who claimed rights by early settlement.   The water wars continue to this day.   Governor Jerry Brown has proposed a massive tunnel system under the San Joaquin River delta to move water
south for agriculture and urban users.   The issue could end up on the ballot.   This proposal is not new, but with a Democrat- controlled legislature and a popular Democrat as governor, it could happen.   We will wait and see.