With more rain on the way, officials are carefully monitoring Lake Cachuma after it nearly reached capacity last week, leading to officials proactively releasing water from the reservoir.
In order to prevent flooding downstream and keep the lake full, officials do have to release water from the reservoir into the Santa Ynez River to prevent the lake from overflowing after significant rainfall.
Walter Rubalcava with Santa Barbara County’s Water Resources Division said they are working with the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation to minimize impacts and keep the lake as full as needed.
“We need to balance the lake staying full for water supply and minimize any potential impacts downstream,” Rubalcava said. “We start working early, once the storm is forecasted, to try and do what we can to help balance those impacts both to downstream users and keeping the lake full.”
With rain expected the rest of the week, Rubalcava said they expect Lake Cachuma to fill up again and they’ll be looking out for impacts to downstream communities like Lompoc and the Santa Ynez Valley.
“We will continue to monitor the next storm coming in, but as of right now, flows are manageable for all the downstream communities,” Rubalcava said.
The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation is the agency in charge of managing water flows from Lake Cachuma and other reservoirs.
Rain L. Emerson, a spokesperson for the Bureau of Reclamation, said they are monitoring the forecast and coordinating releases with the Santa Barbara County Water Agency and the Santa Barbara County Flood Control Water Conservation District.
“What we’re doing right now is making pre-releases to keep the inflow matching the outflow, so that we are maintaining the elevation without projecting to go over,” Emerson said.
With this week’s storms, Emerson said they expect the reservoir to be full again within the next month or so.
“We’re going to be watching that storm, and if the storm ends up coming in with more inflow than anticipated, we’ll probably make releases again, similar to what we did in this last storm,” Emerson said.
Emerson explained that in last week’s storm, they did releases to make space for new rain water coming in, that way they wouldn’t have to do a bigger release later on that could flood downstream communities.
Rains Boost Local Water Supplies
As of Tuesday, Lake Cachuma held 189,194 acre-feet of water, which is 98% of the reservoir’s capacity.
The recent storms are also looking good for the region’s water supply.
David Matson, general manager of the Goleta Water District, said it’s unusual to see the lake full this early into the rainy season.
“This series of early, strong atmospheric river-driven storms has resulted in a dramatic rise in lake levels,” Matson said. “Even without a full Lake Cachuma, the district was already well positioned from a water supply standpoint regardless of the recent early winter rain.”
He credited the strong water supply to a diverse water supply portfolio, favorable rainfall over the last several years, and because Goleta Water customers are consistently among the lowest per capita water users in the state.
Based on the 2026 water supply outlook, and the amount of early season rain, Matson said they don’t anticipate the need to restrict new water supply connections for the next couple of years, until conditions warrant them to do so.
The district’s most recent moratorium on new connections was from 2011 through 2022 and was triggered by the S.A.F.E. Water Supplies Ordinance when severe drought conditions led to water supply shortages in Lake Cachuma and the State Water Project.
As of this week, none of California is experiencing drought, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor.
Click here for the latest forecast from the National Weather Service.
Click here for real-time rainfall totals from the county Public Works Department.
