The water supply in Santa Barbara is exceeding expectations after a wet winter helped fill local reserves.
On Thursday, the Santa Barbara Water Commission heard a report from city staff detailing the status of the city’s local water supply, what it anticipates looking ahead, and preparations.
The city’s annual water year begins in October, and city staff shares reports on the water supply in May and November.
Jasmine Showers, a water resources specialist for the city, said Santa Barbara used less water than it had planned for this year. A graph showed that the city anticipated using close to 14,000 acre-feet of water but instead used less than 12,000 acre-feet.
“We used less water than we were planning due to the wet winter. We were able to use more of the Gibraltar Reservoir and the Mission Tunnel water than we thought we would be able to,” Showers said.
In 2024, the Gibraltar Reservoir received 42 inches of rain, which is 162% of a normal year. Lake Cachuma received 31 inches of rain and Santa Barbara received 32.96 inches.
Despite the wetter-than-normal year in 2024, Showers stated that city water staff are being conservative as they plan for the future. According to Showers, the next three years are expected to be drier than the previous year.
Showers also showed two models from the U.S. Drought Monitor displaying the drought level across California at different times. The first graph showed that as of November 2023, the level of drought in most of the state was minimal.
A second graph this month showed that more than half of California was rated as “abnormally dry.”
Showers said the city does not use the Drought Monitor to plan on a local level, but it does give a good idea of what is happening on the state level.
Additionally, she stated that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA, is predicting a weak La Niña for the next year. The prediction could mean drier-than-usual weather.
Because of this prediction, the city is planning for little to no rainfall for the next three years.
Even in drought conditions, however, the city could meet its water demands for the next three years using a combination of water from Lake Cachuma, Gibraltar Reservoir, Mission Tunnel infiltration, desalination, and recycled water, a staff report said.
According to the presentation, the Gibraltar Reservoir supplied 33% of the city’s water supply in 2024. Even if rainfall over the next year is less than average, city staff expects the reservoir to fill up because of its small size.
The Cachuma Reservoir is at 91% capacity and made up 21% of the city’s 2024 water supply. The Mission Tunnel made up 16% of last year’s water supply but is expected to make up less in 2025.
Showers also said that the desalination plant has become a critical part of the city’s water supply, making up 21% of it last year.
“The most important part about desalination is it allows us to bank groundwater and then bank up surface water supplies that we would otherwise need to use,” Showers said.
Additionally, the city is planning to avoid pumping groundwater over the next three years to allow the basins to recover from heavy use during a drought.
Water Commission chair Cora Snyder asked about graphs showing the demand from city customers continuously rising over the next three years. She questioned whether demand would rise as much as the graphs show.
Dakota Corey, the water supply and services manager, explained that the strategy is to plan to have enough water for customers, but her team does plan to develop a new urban water management plan.
Once the plan is developed, the city will be better able to measure the actual demand from customers.
Snyder said her concern was spending money to fill a demand that does not exist.
“I think there’s just a tradeoff between we want to be conservative and have water that our customers need,” Snyder said, “and if we keep doing that consistently over the years, it leads to increased investments in water supplies that we may not need.”
