forde shorts

The Forde Files No 144

By Tina Fisher Cunningham

Fisher Forde Media

Blessed with water – The Tehachapi-Cummings County Water District is awash in water. “We have all the water we can handle,” district Manager Tom Neisler told the Forde Files. “The reservation is full.” Jacobsen Reservoir (Brite Lake) is not quite full to the tippy top as of Mar. 30, but close to it. It holds 1,450 acre feet as of Mar. 29. The reservoir capacity is 1,800 acre feet. The district has been pumping State Water Project (SWP) water up the hill from the Central Valley since Feb. 1 – the earliest the district has started pumping. “To import [the available] 10,000 acre feet, we need 10 months a year to do it,” Neisler said. The district is keeping the lake full so that when agriculture demand grows, there will be plenty of surface water to distribute before the farmers and other wholesale customers access ground water from their wells. “We need our customers to use surface water first,” Neisler said. The big agricultural water users in Cummings Valley continue to meet with the water district to iron out an agreement on limits of ground water usage. In the meantime, Neisler said, the ag customers are maintaining a “voluntary cooperative agreement” to draw half their water from wells and half from the SWP surface water system. The SWP water allocation remains at a generous 60 percent. “It may go up or down,” Neisler said. “We will hear next week.” The State Water Project is facing enormous difficulties because of the heavy rain, which is on track to be a record high for California. Neisler said the SWP Oroville Dam and the 2.5-mile long Clifton Court Forebay, a reservoir 17 miles southwest of Stockton, specifically are looming threats because of the amount of water accumulating from rain and – soon -- from melting snowpack. “There is damage to the facilities,” Neisler said. “The State Water Project has not responded well to the heavy rains. It’s broken – hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth.” Those woes are a world away for the fish and fishermen at Brite Lake, which has been stocked for the Saturday, April 1Tehachapi Recreation and Park District fishing derby.

Data wonk -- Edwards Air Force Base covers 308,000 acres, or 481 square miles, in three counties -- Kern, Los Angeles and San Bernardino. The 412th Test Wing is the host wing for Edwards. The Test Wing plans, conducts, analyzes and reports on all flight and ground testing of aircraft, weapon systems, software and components as well as modeling and simulations for the Air Force. The 412th Test Wing has excuted successful test programs for major weapons systems, including developing new brakes for F-15 Strike Eagles, advancing the F-35 to initial operational capability, upgrading the F-35 Steath bomber, C-17 drag reduction testing and testing the new KC-46 Pegasus aerial refueling tanker.