more rain, more intense storms, and
swings between wet and dry years
becoming more severe,” Wilson says.
“We need to use everything that’s
out there in service of this pressing
problem of Western water.”
Across the U.S., many large dams
were built in the mid-1900s, when
weather forecasting was low-tech.
Predictive tools have become more
advanced, but many water control
manuals are stuck in the past. The
U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which
manages f lood risk across the country,
partially paid for the construction of
the major reservoirs so it has dictated
how to operate portions of the reser-
voirs set aside for f lood operations.
The process, before the days of satel-
lites and modern radar, was simple: If
the water level crossed a specified line
on the diagram, water managers were
supposed to release water.
In the 1970s, Joseph Countryman
was head of reservoir operations for the
Corps in Sacramento. With the diagram
being so crude, he advocated to incor-
porate forecasts. But the chain of com-
mand, which flowed up and eastward
to Washington, D.C., didn’t want to
bank on weather predictions to manage
floods, he says. “‘Yes, the logic is great,’”
Countryman recalls being told, “‘but
the forecasts aren’t reliable.’”
Countryman, who left the Corps in
1987 and was president of MBK Engi-
neers in Sacramento from 1988 until
2011, consulted with various officials in
California. Discussions about updating
water control manuals continued up
to a few years ago when FIRO started
gaining momentum. But Countryman,
now a private consultant and member
of the Central Valley Flood Protection
Board, cautions too much optimism
about the use of forecasting proce-
dures too fast. Not all reservoirs can
fully take advantage of FIRO yet.
“That is what people have to keep
in mind,” Countryman says. “This
isn’t a cure-all for all situations. Many
reservoirs would have to be retrofit-
ted. … In some cases, downstream
channels would need to be enlarged.”
The reservoir would need to be
able to release water quickly with a
large outlet capacity. For instance,
Folsom Dam has the ability to
release water at 160,000 cubic feet
per second. Compare that to New
Don Pedro Dam on Tuolumne River,
which can only release 9,000 cubic
feet per second, or Friant Dam on the
San Joaquin River, which can only
release 8,000.
“I’m a big believer in this technolo-
gy,” Countryman says, “but I don’t like
to see things oversold.”
A long uphill battle
Yuba County is still feeling the pain from
floods and levee failures in 1986 and
1997. The economy hasn’t fully recov-
ered, James says. He points to the former
Peach Tree Mall (now called the Feather
River Center) in Linda, which never
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May 2020 | comstocksmag.com
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