Wednesday June 29, 2022
ABC 10 —
There’ll be an audit of California’s water supply forecast after the state overestimated and prematurely released 700,000 acre-feet of water last year, officials announced Monday.
A news release from Assemblymember Adam Gray (D-Merced) announced that Gray’s request for audit was approved. It aims to examine the impacts of the flawed forecasts and the Department of Water Resources (DWR) and State Water Board.
“Errors on this scale have real and measurable consequences,” Gray said in the news release. “The managers of the largest local, state, and federal reservoirs use this information to determine when to let water accumulate and when to let water out to make room for the coming snowmelt. Growers use the information to predict how much water they can expect for their farms and how many acres they can afford to plant. The estimates are used to inform everything from flood control to power generation and water quality standards.”
California’s water operations overestimated the forecast by 68% for the Sacramento River region, 45% for the San Joaquin River region and 46% for the Tulare Lake region, according to a state report. Those overestimations left the operators with less stored water than was necessary, according to Gray’s news release.