Where are the rains of yesteryear? The wet winter of 2017 is a distant memory as Santa Barbara County staggers into its eighth year of drought. As of this month, the water level at Lake Cachuma, the main water supply for the South Coast and Santa Ynez Valley, has dropped back to 31 percent of capacity, a mark the reservoir hit in October 2014, on the way down to a record low of 7 percent in October 2016.
“I think the dry conditions have just worn everybody out,” said Chris Dahlstrom, general manager for Santa Ynez River Water Conservation District No. 1, one of five agencies that draw from Cachuma. “It would be a great thing to get a good winter.” Yet no rain is forecast through Thanksgiving. A weak-to-moderate El Niño condition developing in the equatorial Pacific Ocean may not hold much promise for Southern California, said Eric Boldt, a meteorologist for the National Weather Service in Oxnard. “Right now, it doesn’t look very favorable for a wet year,” he said, “but there’s still some time to reverse course.”
As the drought drags on, it’s not surprising that a dispute is simmering over allocations from the lake for the South Coast and Santa Ynez Valley. For now, the county has prevailed with a gradualist approach that releases some water now for sure and some in the spring — maybe. “When we get down to the bottom of the barrel here and we’re counting drops, we’ve got to be very careful,” said Tom Fayram, deputy director of County Public Works. “We’re making sure the water’s there before we allocate it. It’s very logical: We don’t want to come up short.”
