There will be no release today. PG&E;’s Chili Bar has received almost nothing from SMUD since they spilled on Thursday. Chili Bar went into Friday virtually full, and SMUD had projected a release of over 1000 AF, so PG&E; did a 3 hour boating release to create room for the release that never happened. If they had known that they would be receiving almost nothing from SMUD they would have held the water they had for Saturday. This morning SMUD is posting that there will be only 519 AF release into Chili Bar today, which doesn’t do much more than keep up with the minimum flow. I won’t be surprised if SMUD ends up releasing a lot more this afternoon, like they did on Thursday. But I’m learning that despite all the hoopla that accompanied their posting daily and hourly predictions on their website, the predictions have virtually no value in helping forecast flows. Since all I can do is talk to PG&E;, and all they can do is base their releases on what is actually in Chili Bar reservoir, we are back to knowing there is water when it hits the river below the dam. I don’t plan on wasting my time doing any long term projections (more than 2 hours out) for the rest of this year. I’m going to concentrate instead on relicensing negotiations.
