Posted on 09/25/2015 1:27:37 PM PDT by Red Badger
FOLSOM LAKE (CBS13) — A Northern California reservoir ran dry overnight, killing thousands of fish and leaving residents looking for answers.
While a $3.5 million drought safety net at Folsom Lake finishes, a lake in another part of the state is left high and dry.
Thousands of fish lay dead in what used to be Mountain Meadows reservoir also known as Walker Lake, a popular fishing hole just west of Susanville.
“Everywhere that you see that’s wet, there was water,” said resident Eddie Bauer.
RELATED: California Drought Has More Insects Swarming Toward Homes
Residents say people were fishing on the lake last Saturday, but it drained like a bathtub overnight. Bauer has lived near this lake his entire life. This is the first time he’s ever seen it run dry. He and other residents want answers.
Pacific Gas & Electric Company owns the rights to the water and uses it for hydroelectric power.
It’s the situation we worked hard to avoid but the reality is we’re in a very serious drought, there’s also concerns for the fish downstream,” said spokesman Paul Moreno.
Bauer says there should’ve been at least two weeks of water left and that would’ve given PG&E enough time to relocate the fish.
“This makes me feel like they didn’t want to do a fish rescue and that it was easier to open that sucker up Saturday night,” Bauer said.
PG&E officials say nobody opened the dam up and the water simply ran out.
No matter who’s to blame, residents here worry, this could happen in other areas of the state.
“The reservoirs are all continuing to be far below normal,” said Doug Carlson with the Department of Water Resources.
He says there’s no question water concerns are still a serious issue across the state.
“We are reliant upon rainfall to fill those lakes of course and until we get more rain we’re not likely to see any appreciable increase in the reservoir levels,” he said.
At Folsom Lake, workers are finishing work on floating barges that would pump water to the city of Folsom and the prison if the lake gets too low for the water to flow through an intake valve. An insurance policy that may be put into use soon.
Somebody must have found the drain plug and pulled it........................
“California’s got some big dam problems.”
More like CA has some damn big problems.
Even back when it was full it was at max about 8 feet deep. Usually it's only like three, so you could pretty much walk straight across it in your fishing boots and the water would maybe come up to your waist.
It will fill up again. They might want to fix that drain plug while it's empty.
California has moonbeam problems.
mescins stole the water.....
“It takes a lot of water to irrigate fruits and nuts........................”
And a lot of tax dollars to keep them happy.
Another release of water so VP Al Gore could go fishing?
Gill to Gill?
Import some more illegals to fill it back up.
I flushed the toilet twice, did that help any?
Don’t tell me Hilary jumped in it and splashed all the water out.
Everywhere that you see that’s wet, there was water,” said yogi berra
You mean their ‘contractors’...
Oh, yeah, thanks. EPA “contractors”. (Said while nervously looking around)
Kalifornia is also trying to hide the real data.
Ask any lib (or (D) )and they will tell you how bad this drought is and how the reservoir levels have never been so low.
Then go to the actual real-time data here -
http://cdec.water.ca.gov/cdecapp/resapp/getResGraphsMain.action
Click on any reservoir and it will show a years graph with the dry 1977/78 levels shown.
Every reservoir I checked presently has more water in it than in the 1977 dry year even with a state population that is 50% larger than it was then.
Talk about hiding (or perhaps just not reporting) real data.
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