Drought pressure subsides at Lake Sonoma, but marina operators still struggling

Water levels at Sonoma County’s largest reservoir and freshwater boating destination are no longer shrinking, but the heavy rains and plentiful runoff that brought the lake to its brim have led to headaches for operators of the lake’s lone marina.

With fueling facilities and sewage pump-out stations likely to be underwater well into the boating season, operators at Lake Sonoma Marina won’t venture a guess as to what the economic impacts could be.

“We found out (the first week of April) their idea is to hold back water after one of the wettest winters ever,” Rick Herbert, operating partner of the Geyserville marina, told the Business Journal. “The Army did this without consulting us and it affects us the most.”

He’s referring to the Army Corps of Engineers that is mostly responsible for reservoir and dam operations.

Sonoma Water, the county agency, partners with the Army Corps and uses the lake storage to feed its drinking water supplies for about 600,000 people in Sonoma and Marin counties.

The reservoir was at its lowest level in history only six months ago. Now it sits at just over 100% of its seasonal capacity.

Herbert, who has had a lease with the Army Corps for 38 years, says his agreement calls for the lake to be at 451 feet on May 1. On April 23 it was at more than 458 feet.

He said with the infrastructure seven feet under water, boat owners have to bring in their own fuel. Houseboats must keep wastewater from toilets on the vessel until the water level changes. Marina employees are shuttling owners to their boats because that’s the only way to access them. Some day-use areas are inaccessible.

“I will say it will have a significant financial impact (especially over Memorial Day). Once you don’t have the income, you don’t get another opportunity to make the same income,” Herbert said.

By mid-March, Lake Sonoma had risen to 119% of its seasonal capacity, spurring dam managers to conduct their first flood control releases since 2019 from the 40-year-old Warm Springs Dam.

Similar flood releases were made from the smaller, older reservoir at Lake Mendocino in January, which Sonoma Water also operates.

“In this new world of feast or famine for water this is a new strategy to leverage water when we have it,” said Don Seymour, deputy chief engineer with Sonoma Water. “The goal is to keep the reservoir as full as possible for dry periods we know will be reoccurring.”

That means there is no way to tell the marina operator when the lake will be at 451 feet.

Eventually water will be released this season from Lake Sonoma into the Russian River as it is needed downstream. But neither the feds nor the water agency could tell Herbert when his infrastructure might be operational for this boating season.

Herbert said he is asking Rep. Jared Huffman to weigh in, given the dam and reservoir operations fall under federal control.

“They did this (held back water) without any public input; without any input from their recreational partners,” Herbert said. “If we had prior notice before it flooded, we could have made these modifications.”

Those changes would have been costly, he admitted. But he would have preferred that hassle to the predicament he’s now in.

“Our goal is to maintain storage as high as possible at Lake Sonoma,” Seymour said.

Sonoma Water is in the early stages of studying whether it can adopt the same strategy at Lake Sonoma as it does at Lake Mendocino, which uses advanced forecasting of heavy atmospheric river storms to allow dam managers to hold on to more water through the winter and spring months and make flood control releases as needed.

Sonoma Water first asked in the summer of 2021 for what’s called a “minor deviation” in the contract that would allow for 19,000 acre-feet more than usual to be stored in the reservoir. (An acre-foot is enough water to cover an acre of land 1-foot deep.) With the ongoing drought continuing last year, it was a moot point. The same request came in last August and was again approved by the Army Corps.

But the marina operator said no one told him any of this was being talked about, let alone approved.

The Army Corps admits there was a breakdown in communication with Herbert.

“Likely there is some room for improvement on communications,” Christopher Schooley, operations project manager with the Army Corps of Engineers, told the Business Journal.

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