It might mean some revenue for ski industry proprietors, but nothing else will come in the way of benefits as the melt off runs directly into the sea and the environmental movement keeps marching California to the poor house.
Now that all the earthwork dams in the Sierras have been knocked down and the gates opened, what is to prevent the seasonal flooding of much of the Central Valley that had recurred for eons before it was settled by persons of European descent who were looking for agricultural land?
It took most of a century of hard and steady work to bring the annual flooding under control, and to construct the sluices and waterways that fed the breadbasket of the Central Valley.
Yeah. Sure is a shame they don’t have a few billion more acre-feet of storage. They only had about 5 months to plan for the bounty, and I am sure they managed to screw it up.
“but nothing else will come in the way of benefits as the melt off runs directly into the sea”
Not so. Study.
More than half is stored and used for irrigation of the finest farmland in the world. The water distribution system in California would make the Romans quite jealous.
The only thing it has been lacking lately is water.
That's simply not true. Here is the data for Lake Shasta:
http://cdec.water.ca.gov/cdecapp/resapp/resDetailOrig.action?resid=SHA
You will note that it was drawn down earlier this year and is now starting to fill with late rain runoff, which will be followed by the snowpack. The draw down is going to all the reservoirs closer to the population like San Luis and those in the LA Basin. While it's true we desperately need more storage capacity, the state isn't going throw away most of the snowpack. The biggest screwup has been the failure to maintain Oroville, and the loss of the water they had to prematurely release because of the spillway failure.