Mark Foree, the executive director of the Truckee Meadows Water Authority, announced at today’s TROA (Truckee River Operating Agreement) celebration that TMWA has purchased the water rights that the Truckee-Carson Irrigation District (TCID) owned in Donner Lake.  TMWA already owed the other half of the water rights to water stored in Donner Lake.

Mark Foree, Executive Director of TMWA, announcing the purchase of Donner Lake Water Rights.

In a followup to his comments, he indicated that the purchase is expected to be completed by the beginning of February.  He also indicated that the TCID has agreed to drop lawsuits it still has regarding the TROA.

The TROA celebration was attended by many of the people who have been working on implementing the Truckee River Negotiated Settlement since the 1980’s.  Senator Harry Reid was instrumental in shepherding TROA for the last 2 and a half decades.  The Senator had planned to attend, but his flight from Las Vegas was cancelled due to the weather.  In remarks delivered by phone to the crowd of more than 75 people,  he acknowledged the many people who helped make TROA possible – including many of the people at the celebration.

Donner Lake with the Carson Range in the background.

“TMWA (Truckee Meadows Water Authority) is planning to build a new water treatment plant on Whites Creek near Callahan Ranch Road on the north side of the Mt. Rose Highway. There will be a public Open House about the plans for this plant, January 11 from 5 to 7 pm at the South Valleys Library. This will also be discussed at the Citizens Advisory Board meeting, which I believe is scheduled for Thursday, January 14 at 6 pm, also at the South Valleys Library.” – [email from Beth Honebein]

The TMWA’s plan is to address the dramatic drops in groundwater as development continues in the Mt Rose “fan” area. The development over the last decades have taken more and more water from the depleting aquifer.  The proposed solution – taking more surface water – could further reduce groundwater recharge from surface overland flow and will reduce flows in the creek below the proposed plant. To find out how TMWA plans to handle the current and proposed increases in population in this area it is important to attend the meetings.

Whites Creek flows from the top of Mt Rose and naturally would end in Steamboat Creek.

More snow and rain could be on the way after Dec 10 according to the US Weather Service. Could this be the beginning of a winter that can make a real dent in the drought? We hope so. The forecast is for warm conditions ahead of the storm. Monday through Wednesday are forecast to have highs close to 60ºF, but cooling into the 40ºs as the storm approaches on Thursday.

Seven day NOAA Forecast from 12/6/2015

(See the National Weather Service 7 Day forecast map on their Facebook page here.)

Right now, Lake Tahoe is nearly 18″ below its rim, although the Lake did get a very slight bump from the storm on December 3 and there was more precipitation in the mountains, too. Recently, the Lake has moved slightly higher, but Pyramid Lake is continuing to drop especially since water diversions to the Lahontan Reservoir are diverting more than half the flow of the Truckee River at Derby Dam. Upstream reservoirs on the Truckee River hold just a fraction of their capacity. So, there is a large deficit that needs to be overcome to produce drought busting river runoff this spring.  Whether this storm is the beginning of that hoped for big snowpack and runoff, we’ll not know until the final surveys are done in the spring.

The chart below shows where we stand as of this weekend with water storage.  One of the significant facts is that Lake Tahoe is a negative 25 percent. Since it is below its rim, it must receive 180,000 acre-feet of water just to be at its rim so that water can once again begin to flow from Lake Tahoe into the Truckee River at “Fanny Bridge”. The next largest reservoir, Stampede, is at 12 percent followed by Boca at 15 percent.  We will revisit this chart again to see how things are changing as the winter progresses.

Here is the latest graphic of Lake Tahoe’s elevation change during the past week. Note that the bumps in elevation and the flattening afterward in a short period of time are generally caused by the increase in elevation caused by winds blowing on the surface of the Lake and pushing the elevation of the Lake higher at the measuring station.