Monday February 27, 2023
KSBW —
“So far this year, beginning October 1, we’ve had 91,000 acre-feet go out past the Highway 1 gage, so you know it is almost double a normal year, so it’s been very wet but most of it just goes out to the fish,” said David Stoldt with Monterey Peninsula Water Management District.
That 91,000 acre-feet is equivalent to roughly 29.6 million gallons of water going out to sea or nine years’ worth of drinking water for the Peninsula.
Stoldt said this year’s above-average rainfall has reinvigorated conversations to do more to collect rainwater in the future.
“You know you have these ideas and then three dry years go by and you say why bother,” said Stoldt about past attitudes towards water collection.
Not every drop of rainwater this winter went out to the Pacific. To date his water year the Peninsula’s water utility California American Water has banked about 500 acre-feet of water off the Carmel River, less than a tenth of what the Peninsula will use in a year, the water’s been piped to the Seaside Basin and stored in injection wells.