Can someone confirm this rumor?

LOL! My bad, I just see some supper old pictures of El Cap and I thought everyone would appreciate them. I understand they may not go with the article your planning to write, but I though there might be something you could use.

 

I will scan some of them and send to you when I get a chance.

 

This is part of the reason my boat will probably be for sale soon. There's too much traffic as it is when the lakes are full. Now that some of the better lakes are mud puddles on the verge of closing those anglers need to go somewhere...welcome to even more crowded lakes with seemingly more a-holes on the water. I really need to get out of Cali...

 

Criminal indeed! Absolutely tragic in my eyes! Such is life when fishing "water storage reservoirs" in Southern California. The closure of my personal favorite DVL, has left the biggest hole in my heart. The state the "Lil B" is in, is a close second. It just aint right! Its a damn good thing I enjoy fishing salt water!

 

On a side note, the incredibly low local water levels in our reservoirs have played a significant role in how my fishing has evolved over the last several seasons...

I fish everything from a couple hours on the bank in the bay to a 12-14 hour dawn to dusk day at Barrett or DVL to a 36 hour trip on a 1.5 day chasing Pelagics offshore. One thing I have noticed is that my fresh water trips have significantly decreased while my saltwater trips have significantly increased. Even though my father and I live in San Diego, we considered DVL our "home" lake because it was that "good" and to us it was worth the 2 hour drive to fishing the "Jewel". Now that the ramp has been closed forget about it! I fished the "B" half as many as the year before. Even though the fishing was still good by any lakes standard, it was just depressing seeing how low it was. It felt like this had a trickle down effect to the other lakes as well...

Now on the other hand my salt water trips have skyrocketed! For instance I have already made a handful of trips down to Baja to fish Yellowtail this year, and that's not including the numerous skiff and Kayak trips I have done in the bay along with the bank sessions mixed in. The "true" saltwater season hasn't even begun yet! While more and more lakes continue to drop and lose access, the saltwater season is just starting to crack off. The first of many offshore Tuna trips, Island Yellowtail trips and Calico Bass skiff trips are right around the corner...

 

Beleive me brother, I feel ya! My first love is deep back in the tules or off a long tappered main lake point! I havent heard anything about a rise in water level at DVL, and to be honest I kind of stopped paying attention. Close attention anyway. I know a ramp extension was approved, but unfortunately a little to late for now. I hope your buddy is right. What a blessing that would be If DVL opened back up.

It would absolutely spark a passion for fishing that place like I used to. I just hope its not to late before I start to see my salt vs fresh water trips get to skewed. Trust me, my heart goes out to my fellow green bass anglers who dont dabble in the salt...

 

Yes nute the tap is on.

 

From the DVL dock hands, only 4 feet of water was put in to replace the 4 they removed for a small dam repair/retro.
This was last week. I saw no water coming in at the tower off a rental. The striper reports would have been blowing up as well with any flowing water. IMHO.

 

You have to wonder if the water level at Diamond Valley is being held at a lower level for political reasons, if they fill the lake it will be much harder to convince the public that there is a water shortage and they still need to conserve. I myself would be pumping the excess flow from the winter runoff into the lake for storage, but then again, that is just me and what do I know.

Since the lake is owned and operated by MWD and they would love nothing more than to continue to increase your rates, filling the lake does not benefit them. A full lake makes it much harder to convince anyone there is a need for conservation or rate increases.

We have worked on several of their properties and I can tell you if they ran more like a business and less like a government agency there would be no need for an increase. They go over the top on every project, spending money on non-functional aspects of the project; travertine flooring, artistic light fixtures and ceramic tiles on the roof, all this on a chemical treatment building. Granted when it is a $100 million project and these extra only account for a small percentage of the cost it is easy to throw on to the project, but if you take all of the projects and subtract these little extras they add up.

Face it, if it weren’t for Olivenhain, Hodges would not be fishable, the Olympic training center Otay would be much lower as well, the run off lakes are going to suffer this year and if we do not get above normal rain fall in the next few years the lakes are going to get worse before they get better.

 

I heard some MWD moron talk about how we need to build more reservoirs in SoCal. Why, you can't fill the lakes you have! They always talk about how we need to keep the lakes full in case of emergency, but I see no effort to that effect at all! We now have the ability to fill the majority of our lakes via the aqueduct but our cities claim they don't want to buy the water. Water falls from the sky for free, they've raised our water rates 100% the last 10 yrs and now they want to jack them another 40% the next 5yrs!. Stop stealing our money and give us the water were paying for! We spent millions on that pump station at Hodges and I'm still waiting to see any benefit to that project. The Desal plant in Carlsbad is another boondoggle project...We're paying ridiculous money for the water..and then we pay again to put it through our filtration system. How's about us doing an investigation into the MWD and the SDCWA and find out where our money really goes. I know the MWD raised their own pensions 20% the last time they raised our rates! I'm sure our politicians want no part of an investigation, considering the fact that they're intertwined with the water Authorities.

 

I've said it time and again that MWD and CWA careless about fishing or water access for the public. They care only about making money by selling water. Right now they owe San Diego $2 Billion on a lawsuit they lost but are appealing over water rates. Yet they are allowed to continue to raise rates.

What we need to do is find a good attorney that would go after them and hold them accountable over these increases, cause I sure do know when the lakes fill back up, they sure in hell are not going to lower the prices!

Someone needs to figure out how they can remove both from water rights in the state, just seems the little guy gets screwed again.

 

"Is there a minimum water level for El Cap before they actually would transfer from SV.
And also is there a minimum for Barrett before the city would shut down the fishing program until the water level came back to a preferred level.."

Sorry I somehow missed these questions:
-Minimum water level for El Cap: As far as I know, no. The ESP (emergency storage project) determines (somewhat) water levels and storage. "The Emergency Storage Project is a system of reservoirs, interconnected pipelines and pumping stations designed to make water available to the San Diego region if imported water deliveries are interrupted." As from here: http://www.sdcwa.org/sites/default/files/esp_fs.pdf and http://www.sdcwa.org/emergency-storage-project.

Water can be transferred from SV to El Cap but unless they have a valid (storage/emergency) reason to, they won't. Also (I've mentioned this before somewhere) not all the water in a lake 'belongs' to any one entity (sometimes not even the entity that 'owns' the dam and/or property, like Hodges, gets any water from it); typically it's between 2-3 entities, or more have 'storage rights' in various reservoirs. If one entity decides to 'withdraw' their portion, the water level goes down. And (in the case of those connected to the pipeline) unless someone else with storage rights purchases more water nothing is going in. And transfereing water costs money too, unless you own, maintain and operate your own pipes you are going to pay extra to 'borrow' them to move your water from point A to point B. Here is an interesting (but rather long) paper on the California water market: http://www.ppic.org/content/pubs/report/R_1112EHR.pdf. Sorry for the long response; the answers are never simple when it comes to water

-Barrett minimum water level: I would not be one to determine that. I think it would be a joint decision of the staff, DFW and management if it were to come to that.

 

Thanks for the info Lori, but I still have to question why is some of the lake in N. Cal dumping water? Shata is moving water in to the Scaramento River? If we are so low here in S. Cal, why isn't that water being made available to us??It's just not Shasta that is dumping water either, at least 4 other lakes doing the same thing. Seems like again between politics and greed we the people are getting screwed!!

Here is one article I found. http://ktvl.com/news/local/water-released-from-shasta-lake

Here is another. http://ww2.kqed.org/science/2016/02...r-in-a-drought-but-science-could-change-that/

 

It's available, but we aren't buying.

 

Can someone explain this to the tax payers why not? Are we just going to allow our lakes to dry up or wait until the price even goes higher so they can raise rates again? This makes no since to me that we allow water to run off to the ocean, yet no one has the mind to fill every lake possible to keep a healthy supply available.

It takes twice as much water to refill a dry lake than maintain a lake level at it's current levels. Why does this not make since to buy water now when it should be CHEAPER, than in the middle of summer when less is available and the ground will take more to keep it in the lakes?

 

This is just my opinion: The water district would rather not buy water, with the rate increases and the water restrictions in place they can sell the existing water they have in storage with no added cost, this helps increase their revenue. If they purchase water they will make less, bottom line. When the storage level drops enough where they are forced to buy water they will need to increase the water rates to do this, more revenue.
Years ago, they dumped water from EC thinking that El nino was bringing heavy floods, it did not come to fruition. The lake stayed low for years after that, be prepared to see this again.
You can not blame the water district employees (the longer most work there the more they shake their heads, I'm sure), it is upper management and bean counters that cause these things that do not always seem to make sense. To you and I it seems logical that when there is an abundance of something like water you store it for dry times, if they have above average rainfall up north and there is a deficit in the south transfer the extra water to optimize storage.
It like companies laying off the workers that produce something so the bottom line looks good for the stockholder quarterlies, even though it is only a short term gain, and ends up hurting production in the long run.

 

This is what I don't get, how does it make since to dump a resource that we have a limited amount of? Why can't they send it down this way for at least storing it for later needs? Seems to me that if you have access of something like water that is so valuable why not keep every drop you can? Do they think the cost of water is going to come down?? Hell no is the answer.