About 60-70 miles north-northeast of Sacramento, in the very western Sierra Nevada mountains as they begin to rise above California’s Central Valley, lie two large reservoirs that help manage water levels on the Feather River. Lake Oroville, naturally, sits just a few miles to the northeast and above the city of Oroville, while New Bullards Bar is more remote and a bit smaller, about 20 miles to the southeast of Lake Oroville. These are only two of more than 70 reservoirs in the Sacramento Region operated by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, but they together serve as part of the Corp’s first pilot projects in their Forecast Informed Reservoir Operations (FIRO) program.

The FIRO program is designed to manage water operations, particular after wet and snowy winters in the region such as 2022-23, by incorporating weather forecasts into flood control operations instead of simply considering rainfall and snowpack measurements. While this project has been ongoing since 2019, this past winter season was the first since then that has had significant amounts of rain and snowfall. This program is currently not being used to make actual real-time decisions about water management, but while being tested, it is hoped that integrating future rainfall and river flows can help increase water availability by as much as 20%. The testing is expected to conclude by 2026, by which time it is also hoped that any of these water availability improvements can become reality.

See KCRA’s full article for more information.

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