Choirs of frogs can now be heard singing in South Coast creeks, a sonic manifestation of the heavier than average rainfall gracing Santa Barbara's South Coast. The good news is that the City of Santa Barbara’s Gibraltar Reservoir spilled last week and remains full, and the amount of water in Lake Cachuma has doubled since the New Year.
But every silver lining, it seems, comes equipped with a discouraging storm cloud. In this case, none of the 23,500 acre-feet of water pooling in Lake Cachuma qualifies as what the experts call “project water,” meaning it’s not available for human consumption by South Coast water agencies. (Not until there’s a live stream running immediately from the base of the dam to the mouth of the Santa Ynez River can water agencies draw from what’s in Cachuma.)
Because Gibraltar has been so choked with ash-encrusted dirt and debris, generated by the recent Rey Fire, it poses serious water quality problems. City of Santa Barbara water czar Joshua Haggmark estimated Gibraltar’s water quality challenges exceed the city’s technical capacity to treat the water to potable standards by a factor of two.