Time to dredge Laguna Lake
With an El Niño looming and no new reservoirs online, what are our options to help relieve long-term drought?
The city of San Luis Obispo has hired a contractor to remove sediment at Laguna Lake, but this can only happen in winter, when the lake is full, using a dredge — not unlike what Morro Bay needs to do periodically at the harbor mouth.
Why not use this rare opportunity of a very wet winter, when California’s dams will literally be running over, to dredge them and run the sediment downstream, when creeks and rivers are full and can transport and disperse the sediment over hundreds of miles of waterways with minimum impact on riparian habitats?
Increasing the capacity of current reservoirs could be a quick fix this winter and give some small measure of relief. We may not have another opportunity like this for a while.
Russell Hodin, San Luis Obispo
This story was originally published October 23, 2015 at 6:50 AM with the headline "Time to dredge Laguna Lake."