The irony was inescapable: Within hours after the state issued a grim warning about water supplies, the first major storm of the season rolled in off the Pacific, soaking Calistoga’s bone-dry landscape.

But did the rain, though substantial, change the long-term outlook for water? Hardly. If anything, it might have lulled people once again into a false sense of security.

The fact is that the region is in the second year of a stubborn drought and, unless a very wet winter is in store, water supplies by next spring will drop to alarming levels. That outlook was reflected in the state Department of Water Resources announcement last week that it might cut as much as 85 percent of the water that it delivers to local suppliers.

And last weekend’s heavy rain didn’t change the situation because the parched soil simply absorbed the moisture.

“We won’t see much effect at the reservoir until we get at least a couple of good rains,” Warren Schenstrom, Calistoga’s water superintendent, said last Friday. He was referring to the Kimball Dam reservoir, which supplies about 40 percent of the city’s water and was at 25 percent capacity on Friday.

The state’s announcement affects five Bay Area water agencies, including the Napa County Flood Control and Water Conservation District, which collects North Bay Aqueduct (NBA) water and distributes it to Calistoga and other users in the county. The state said the Napa County agency might receive only 3,750 acre-feet of water next year, which would be 15 percent of the 25,000 acre-feet requested. The effect of that would likely be water rationing and the curtailment of some farming across the region.

Officials in Calistoga and elsewhere in the Bay Area tend to play down the state’s initial forecasts for water because the announcements are always based on a worst-case scenario. As winter rains arrive, the projected allocations typically are revised upward. So, once again, the chances are good that Calistoga will have an adequate amount of water — unless the winter of ‘08-’09 produces a third consecutive dry year.

Last week’s announcement by the state could produce the lowest water allocations since 1993, at the end of another period of drought. But new complications have arisen since 1993, including greater overall demand for water and a federal court order limiting pumping from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta because of damage to the Delta smelt, an endangered species.

The Kimball Dam reservoir once held 432 acre-feet of water, but sediment that has accumulated over the years has reduced its capacity by nearly one-third, an issue that came up in this year’s mayoral and city council campaigns. The city spent $127,737 a few years ago on a study to determine what to do about Kimball, but no action was taken and the findings are now likely outdated. Dredging, at a cost of perhaps $10 million or more, was one of the options in the consultant’s report. Some officials seem to believe that dredging wouldn’t return enough benefit to justify the significant cost, and they might be right.

But, with a lingering drought and environmental issues looming, Calistoga needs to think hard about diversifying its sources of water — if not by upgrading Kimball, then by other means. The city has been skillful in procuring rights to North Bay Aqueduct water, but maintaining the Kimball Dam reservoir has been pushed aside for years because nobody could find an easy answer. Perhaps an easy answer hasn’t been found because it doesn’t exist.

If nothing is done about Kimball, its value as a water resource will continue to decline, and that means increasing reliance on the NBA, which has its own problems. The city needs to update the consultant’s report — or commission an entirely new one — in order to get at the facts. It then needs to plot a course of action to either dredge the reservoir or look for other sources of water. 

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