The Associated Press
Boats are stuck in the mud Thursday on the edges of a private marina in Lake Arrowhead, Calif. Three years of anemic rain and snowfall have left the private lake down 12 feet, and dropping.

Drought looms in secluded areas of Southern California

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Originally published Saturday, March 16, 2002

LAKE ARROWHEAD, Calif. -- Gunning the 200-horsepower engine on his Mako Marine patrol boat, Roy Wagner skims across Lake Arrowhead, churning the surface of a lake as empty as the million-dollar summer homes that crowd its shores.

At a time when the lake high in the San Bernardino Mountains should be brimming, a gritty necklace of sand marks that shore, like a ring around a bathtub 2.2 miles in length.

Pricey boats sit stranded in the dirt. Docks rise in the air, their ladders seemingly straining to reach the drooping waterline below. The lake's lone island has become a peninsula.

Three years of anemic amounts of rain and snow have left the lake down 12 feet -- and dropping.

"We'll be another 6 or 7 feet below that" by summer's end, Wagner said.

While California overall enjoys normal levels of precipitation this year, thanks to storms that have blanketed the Sierra Nevada with snow, the southern end of the state faces droughtlike conditions and the prospect of destructive wildfires.

So far this season, Southern California has received one-third the precipitation it normally relies on, said Maurice Roos, chief hydrologist with the state Department of Water Resources.

Remote areas at risk

For most of the region, including Los Angeles and San Diego, the lack of rain does not necessarily mean water shortages. Water imported from Northern California and the Colorado River represents the bulk of what is used, making local conditions less of a worry.

In isolated pockets of Southern California, however, and especially those tucked high in the mountains, imported water is not readily available.

"Those are the only areas of concern," said John Gorman, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service.

Residents there are more vulnerable to drought because they are wholly dependent on what can be found locally in wells, behind dams and in lakes.

"This is our fourth year of less-than-half-of-normal precipitation," said Dottie Saville, general manager of the city of Big Bear Lake's department of water, which supplies its customers solely with water it pumps from the ground. "It's getting pretty tight."

In normal years, precipitation is not a problem: The area should have received 19.1 inches by mid-March, according to the National Weather Service. Instead, Big Bear Lake, like Lake Arrowhead, has dropped a dozen feet as runoff from the mountains has slackened.

The Olympian Copyright 2002

back to Outdoors index