State water which costs the South Coast $25 million per year, drought or no drought has made its’ first appearance at Lake Cachuma. From the nearby observation point, it looks like a small faucet emptying into a gigantic bathtub that is nearly 40 feet below the high-water mark. The last time the lake was this low was in 1988, during the second year of a severe drought.
South Coast residents draw down the reservoir at a rate of 2 or 3 feet per month in very dry weather. The 7 inches of state water flowing monthly into the lake right now is more than canceled out by 10 inches of monthly evaporation.
Ten years after a $640 million branch of the California Aqueduct was built from Kern County to Cachuma, state water remains a touchy subject in Santa Barbara County. This year, the aqueduct is delivering only 65 percent of the water that county voters signed up for back in 1991, when they approved the expensive project. Last year, deliveries were at 90 percent.