Bass Lake water level is dropping, per PG&E. How the utility says it’ll impact your summer

The water levels at Bass Lake will be visibly lower this summer, as one might expect given this year’s drought conditions in the central San Joaquin Valley and across California.

“It will be noticeable,” says Paul Moreno, a spokesman for PG&E, which owns the lake.

“The areas where people are going to swimming and boating is going to change,” he says.

But the utility company expects the impact on summer recreation to be minimal.

While PG&E projects water levels at the lake to be about seven feet lower than normal this summer, the lake will be at more than 70% capacity in June and remain that way through Labor Day.

Neither of the lake’s two public cement boat ramps will be affected and the commercial marinas should be able to adjust to the changes with no trouble, Moreno says.

“PG&E is managing water at Bass Lake to balance the needs of recreation, the environment, power generation and downstream water users,” said Aaron Cortes, a director of hydropower operations and maintenance, on the company’s blog site.

This despite the entire Central Valley being in extreme drought, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor. Sections of the southern and eastern Sierra Nevada are now in exceptional drought, the worst of the monitor’s four rankings.

Total precipitation for the season to date in the Central Sierra is 49% of average and spring runoff is forecast to be 30% of average. The previous season, 2019-20, saw 23.48 inches of rain, according to the website BassLakeCa.com.

That’s the lowest total since 2015, when there was 17.66 inches. That year, Bass Lake’s water level dropped to 17 feet below normal summer levels, Moreno says.

“We closely track rain and snowfall within our watershed during winter,” he says.

“It was clear pretty early on that we were going to be in a dry year.”

This spring, the company began working to mitigate the drought conditions by generating less hydroelectric power at its downstream five powerhouses.

PG&E reminds those using the lake this summer to use caution. Less water means less space to share with other boaters and that submerged objects can be closer to the surface.

“Be aware for hazards you might not see,” Moreno says.

This story was originally published May 25, 2021 at 1:11 PM.