Ex-Californian (thankfully). Once upon a time CA had an extensive water storage program. Nearly every dam held back 100s to 1000s of acres of water to be released when there was drought. Then came the environmentalists saying this was unnatural and upset nature's balance. "We'll rely on snowpack right guyz? That's how it worked before all those fish killing dams were built.". So one by one most of the dams came down and CA relied on snowpack.
All was fine until one season there was very little snow. And with little snow no water went into the rivers & streams and farmers were hit hard every drought. But when there is a lot of snowpack, when it melts there is nowhere to put it as most of the water storage behind the dams is gone. So, the fresh water is diverted into the sea to keep it from flooding along the rivers. Unless of course there is a remaining dam in the way like in Oroville. When it rains too much and without any way to moderate that via dams upstream, those downstream get hammered -
Ex-Californian (thankfully). Once upon a time CA had an extensive water storage program. Nearly every dam held back 100s to 1000s of acres of water to be released when there was drought. Then came the environmentalists saying this was unnatural and upset nature's balance. "We'll rely on snowpack right guyz? That's how it worked before all those fish killing dams were built.". So one by one most of the dams came down and CA relied on snowpack.
All was fine until one season there was very little snow. And with little snow no water went into the rivers & streams and farmers were hit hard every drought. But when there is a lot of snowpack, when it melts there is nowhere to put it as most of the water storage behind the dams is gone. So, the fresh water is diverted into the sea to keep it from flooding along the rivers. Unless of course there is a remaining dam in the way like in Oroville. When it rains too much and without any way to moderate that via dams upstream, those downstream get hammered -
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oroville_Dam_crisis
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