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Today was maybe the last of the water tours and I had too much fun. First stop was the Loch Lomond reservoir which provides 17% of our water. It has an earth dam which is covered in emerald grass and steep wooded banks. You can take a canoe or a kayak out on it and tool around looking for ospreys and herons. You don't have to look for the cormorants because they hang out in this one prominent group of trees right there. We learned some history of the watershed, and logging in the Santa Cruz mountains -- there were at one time more than thirty sawmills in our mountains -- and a bunch of stuff about the habitat and the maintenance of the dam.
The Newell Creek watershed was clearcut about a hundred years ago so for now the habitat management is hands-off except for revegetation on some old logging roads. The forest won't get to where it needs a fire for a long time, especially as there was a pretty severe burn a bit over forty years ago. You do know that many California plant species need fire to reproduce, right? One hillside at the north end of the lake is chapparal, which is good too, but most of the watershed is mixed forest and redwood forest.
The way they keep track of the water in the lake is by altitude. The lake is lower than I thought: 570 feet is a full lake (contrast this with the pass at the summit which is I think just under 2000 feet.
There was lots more about fish and spillways and aeration and sampling and where the water comes from (there are four pipes but the one which is used the most is the second to the lowest one).
But we toddled down the hill to the treatment plant where we saw the water being flashmixed with activated carbon, and mixed more slowly with polymers to get flocculation going, and filtered and filtered and filtered and filtered and charged up with chlorine and phosphate (the phosphate is to resist corrosion in old pipes). The flocculation pools are a beautiful shade of turquoise.
And then we went to the pumping station where 47% of our water is drawn right from the San Lorenzo River and pumped up to the treatment plant. You know what? The river is beautiful. It wasn't in 1970 when I came to town -- it was all gravel and trash and dredged-up goo. We got so much information here about the history of the water system, the politics of water,o gosh everything about water. The guys who met us there were map and chart guys. They brought two big old maps -- the watershed and land use on one, and the district and lines of supply and stuff on the other. I learned about the desalination plant we're most likely going to get, and got my brine question answered (they'll pipe the concentrate to the wastewater treatment plant, where it will join the treated wastewater and be piped out to sea. which might make the effluent better for the ocean environment by lessening the difference between the effluent and the seawater) I looked at a really interesting graph of wet and dry years (four categories: wet, normal, dry, and critically dry). It makes an almost regular pattern which couldn't be used for predicting wet and dry years -- except that, knowing the climate, we know we will have dry years, and we will have runs of critically dry years.
in other news, my stepmother, who's really had enough crap by now, is in the hospital getting her medication adjusted and various tests after her right arm went numb(the one originally damaged in the stroke she had in Africa back in November). This time she's in the Santa Rosa Kaiser, which is because she was on a vacation at the time. She's pretty disappointed to be in a hospital again.
The Newell Creek watershed was clearcut about a hundred years ago so for now the habitat management is hands-off except for revegetation on some old logging roads. The forest won't get to where it needs a fire for a long time, especially as there was a pretty severe burn a bit over forty years ago. You do know that many California plant species need fire to reproduce, right? One hillside at the north end of the lake is chapparal, which is good too, but most of the watershed is mixed forest and redwood forest.
The way they keep track of the water in the lake is by altitude. The lake is lower than I thought: 570 feet is a full lake (contrast this with the pass at the summit which is I think just under 2000 feet.
There was lots more about fish and spillways and aeration and sampling and where the water comes from (there are four pipes but the one which is used the most is the second to the lowest one).
But we toddled down the hill to the treatment plant where we saw the water being flashmixed with activated carbon, and mixed more slowly with polymers to get flocculation going, and filtered and filtered and filtered and filtered and charged up with chlorine and phosphate (the phosphate is to resist corrosion in old pipes). The flocculation pools are a beautiful shade of turquoise.
And then we went to the pumping station where 47% of our water is drawn right from the San Lorenzo River and pumped up to the treatment plant. You know what? The river is beautiful. It wasn't in 1970 when I came to town -- it was all gravel and trash and dredged-up goo. We got so much information here about the history of the water system, the politics of water,o gosh everything about water. The guys who met us there were map and chart guys. They brought two big old maps -- the watershed and land use on one, and the district and lines of supply and stuff on the other. I learned about the desalination plant we're most likely going to get, and got my brine question answered (they'll pipe the concentrate to the wastewater treatment plant, where it will join the treated wastewater and be piped out to sea. which might make the effluent better for the ocean environment by lessening the difference between the effluent and the seawater) I looked at a really interesting graph of wet and dry years (four categories: wet, normal, dry, and critically dry). It makes an almost regular pattern which couldn't be used for predicting wet and dry years -- except that, knowing the climate, we know we will have dry years, and we will have runs of critically dry years.
in other news, my stepmother, who's really had enough crap by now, is in the hospital getting her medication adjusted and various tests after her right arm went numb(the one originally damaged in the stroke she had in Africa back in November). This time she's in the Santa Rosa Kaiser, which is because she was on a vacation at the time. She's pretty disappointed to be in a hospital again.
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Sorry to hear about Moher, I hope it's something short term.
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