SHASTA LAKE, Calif.—Longtime bait-and-tackle shop owner Bob Braz has seen droughts come and go at Lake Shasta, nestled in California’s upper Central Valley, but 1976–77 was the worst on record.
The two-year drought left the lake’s water level 238 feet below its 1,067-foot mark above sea level at total capacity, exposing vast swaths of rocky lake bed and debris.
“That was pretty bad,” Braz said, 71, holding up a laminated newspaper article from 1977 now yellowed with time.
One startling picture showed a sprawling lakebed that looked as dry as the Mojave desert.
“The thing that made it so bad was you didn’t have any boat launches. You couldn’t launch your boat. And when the [water] level is down, it’s hard on the elderly and the disabled,” Braz said.
“Often, they'll stay home because launching a boat is physically demanding.”
Eventually, the rain started falling with the region’s variable climate, and Lake Shasta’s water level rose again.
That’s the natural progression, Braz said. Braz has owned The Fishen Hole bait-and-tackle shop in the city of Shasta Lake for 38 years.
There are wet years, and there are dry years, he said.
“We don’t know what the future holds, but we still have half of February, March, April, May—those can be awfully rainy months,” Braz said.
Rain, Rain, Don’t Go Away
Since 2020, Lake Shasta has been in what many locals consider a cyclical dry spell with no consistent sign of ending, even with the torrential rains in January raising the lake’s water level by 68 feet.According to the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, the lake stood at just under 993 feet elevation and 59 percent capacity as of Feb. 18.
“We go in and out of droughts all the time,” Braz told The Epoch Times. “Sometimes, when the lake’s down, the out-of-towners will get on the computer.”
“If they see the lake is down so far, many will cancel and go to Disneyland [instead], or whatever.”
Braz believes the media clamor over climate change is “just a big hoax” regarding Lake Shasta, given what he considers a historical circular drought pattern.
“I’ve lived here all my life. It’s got nothing to do with the heat,” Braz said.
Houseboat Capital
With 365 miles of pristine shoreline, Lake Shasta has earned the nickname “houseboat capital of the world.” An estimated 350 houseboats are moored at six marinas or floating on the lake.The lake owes its existence to the Shasta Dam, built between 1938 and 1945 to supply water and hydroelectric power to California’s rich agricultural Central Valley, which produces roughly two-thirds of the nation’s food.
Located about 10 miles north of Redding, Lake Shasta receives water from the Sacramento River, McCloud River, Pit River, and Squaw Creek.
About 20 percent of California’s water comes from the reservoir.
Seasonal rains supply most of the lake’s volume during wet years, while less than 18 percent comes from melting snow from Mount Shasta to the north.
The dam and reservoir are critical to the Central Valley Project (CVP), a federal power and water management program under reclamation bureau supervision.
The CVP relies on the dam primarily for flood control and to provide water for the U.S. Department of Fisheries to monitor protected salmon populations.
Donald Bader, area manager of the bureau’s Northern California area office at Lake Shasta, said California droughts tend to occur every six or seven years, followed by periods of rainfall.
The drought of 2007 lasted three years, he said. The 2013 drought lasted a year longer.
“We have these blocks of multi-year droughts, and then we get these wet years in between,” Bader said. “The winter precipitation is unpredictable.”
On a clear day, the looming white peak of Mount Shasta is visible from the concrete gravity dam at Lake Shasta.
While clear days and blue skies at the lake are spectacular, Bader said they signify rain isn’t in the forecast.
He said that doesn’t bode well for the cities, towns, and agricultural producers within the CVP that purchase water by allocation.
“Typically, we see 10 to 15 inches of rain each month,” he said. “Last year, we got an inch of rain in January, and we barely got any more in February and March.”
“We are very concerned. If we get past the middle of March [without rain], it’s too late for us to recover” in 2023, Bader told The Epoch Times.
Bader said January was a great month for rainfall, “stacking up every day” with ground saturation around the lake, supplemented by the spring snowmelt.
“In the middle of January, we were very optimistic. A month later and we didn’t get any rain at all. That’s where I’m conservative in saying we’re not out of the woods,” Bader said.
Climate Climax
Shasta Lake Mayor Greg Watkins recalled the 1976–77 California drought as a climatic event that brought Lake Shasta’s water level to its record lowest point at 238 feet below the crest.Watkins said the drought of 2017–18 also saw water levels drop significantly, but the following year, the lake “rebounded hugely.”
“We got 90 inches of rain” instead of the usual average of 60, he said.
In 2020, the lake received only 23 inches of rainfall—30 inches in 2021—with large areas of newly exposed shoreline appearing with their characteristic “bathtub ring” effect.
“Even if the lake is half empty, you can still get in a boat and go 30 miles up three different arms. There is so much lake left,” Watkins said.
“It was getting pretty low in 2017 and 2018—in 2019, it filled to within 18 feet of the top. What did [the federal government] do? They started releasing the water at 70,000 cubic feet per second for 20 days. They dropped the lake 50 feet.”
Watkins said he doesn’t put stock in dire warnings of manmade climate change causing the lake to dry up and blow away.
“I would make nothing of it. It depends on ocean temperatures—el Nino and la Nina,” two seasonal weather patterns bringing either lots of rain or very little.
“I just love the term ‘atmospheric rivers.’ It describes that there’s a lot of moisture in the clouds, and that’s what fills our rivers,” Watkins said.
During periods of drought, lower allocations mean some communities have to do the same with less water.
In the city of Shasta Lake, with a population of 10,371, residents have been under Stage 2 municipal water restrictions to cope with the lower allocation in 2022 and have conserved accordingly.
“This year, they cut us back from 2,600 acre-feet per second to about 500,” Watkins said. “They cut us 75 percent for our drinking water because we are what they call a junior water right holder. We are dependent on Shasta Lake Dam water.”
Some agricultural users were cut to zero, while the city of Shasta Lake had to purchase water from other sources “at a premium,” said Shasta Lake City Manager Jessaca Lugo.
The city paid $90 for an acre-foot of water before the drought. This year, the city will pay $300, and $500 in some cases, for water because of the smaller allocation.
Tough Balancing Act
Lugo said the drought’s human impact is caused less by changes in the weather than by government resource management policies and environmental initiatives.Federal law requires the bureau to keep the lake’s temperature at 56 degrees Fahrenheit to protect the endangered winter-run chinook salmon’s habitat. The agency periodically releases colder water through the dam’s spillway valves during the salmon spawning season.
Watkins said the Shasta Dam and Reservoir Enlargement Project, a federal program, would raise the dam’s height by 18.5 feet, allowing for an additional 600,000 cubic acre-feet of water storage.
The Winnemem Wintu, an indigenous tribe, oppose the project, saying the dam’s higher water level would submerge Dekkas Rock, used in annual tribal swim ceremonies, Watkins said.
Watkins said the city purchased enough water in 2022 but at higher rates to ensure available supply despite mandatory cutbacks in consumption.
Many homeowners’ lawns turned brown as a result of the restrictions, he said.
“The people conserved, but many said, ‘Why are we conserving so much up here at the headwaters when they drive to LA and see green lawns?’”
Lugo said the city of Shasta Lake evolved from the dam’s construction, through which the city acquired assets from the Shasta Public Utility District (SPUD).
“So when our city incorporated [in 1993], we also took the SPUD’s assets. What we didn’t get is we probably should have had senior water rights” and perhaps negotiated a more sizable yearly allocation of water, Lugo said.
“The state as a whole still needs to build more water storage. For the most part, we are a growing state. When you extract resources and not replace them, there is only so much water to go around our state.”
When the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020 and 2021 hit, Lake Shasta saw its water level drop even further, though fears of declining tourism revenues were offset by a steady influx of “COVID Refugees” escaping the medical lockdowns in densely populated urban areas such as San Francisco and Los Angeles.
“During COVID, when people are trying to get out just to [get away], we saw a huge increase in tourism but not related to lake levels,” Lugo said.
“The lower level made no difference,” Watkins added. “There is still so much lake, even if you see the bathtub rings.”
Paradise Lost?
Having grown up in Los Angeles, Matt Doyle, Lake Shasta Caverns National Natural Landmark general manager in Lakehead, has considered the lake his “paradise” for the past two decades.Doyle said that he, too, views the drought of 2020 as a cyclical event that “ebbs and flows” with the irregular rhythm of nature.
“It does look low—and it is low—but there’s quite a bit more to it. I’ve seen it lower than we’ve had previously. In 2019, it was almost up to the top. Nobody talks about that,” Doyle said.
“At the same time, you must look at what California is. Traditionally, it’s always been a desert. We’ve had droughts that lasted hundreds of years.”
Doyle can say with absolute certainty that Lake Shasta is in no immediate danger of going away—regardless of how dry it appears to climate activists since the drought is “cyclical.”
“We can only fill up the lake as much as Mother Nature gives us rain. We can only do so much,” Doyle said.
“Every time I hear a politician say ‘combat climate change,’ it’s like, the climate always changes. So, what do you want it to be? Seventy-five degrees all year round? You can’t control that. You have to have some flux.”
“This is something I’ve dealt with for the past 20 years. It’s the media spin. Yes, there are giant barren pictures [of the lake]. All they had to do was turn it around, and it disappeared.”
Doyle said that some problems associated with lake management are, for lack of a better term, political.
He said while California politicians are vocal about water scarcity, they “completely ignored the fact” that the federal government in 2021 dumped 800,000 acre-feet of water from Lake Shasta to protect the delta smelt, an endangered species.
“That’s bigger than most reservoirs, and it went straight into the ocean, all in the name of the delta smelt and [controlling water] salinity,” Doyle told The Epoch Times.
The lake can hold about 4.5 million cubic acre-feet of water at maximum capacity.
“I believe in science, which means science is correct until it’s proven wrong. Whether or not humans are doing this or it’s a natural cycle” is a matter for debate, Doyle said.
Doyle said he remains hopeful but cautious about the lake at its lower water level. But the historical pattern is drought followed by rain.
“I’ve seen it rain heavily into May. We need a few weeks of good rain, and the lake will go up,” Doyle said.
“We always get concerned. The main reason is it is far more intensive in man-hours” at Lake Shasta Caverns, which conducts tours of the ancient caverns 800 feet above the lake.
Timothy Lehman is the captain of the Cavern Princess, one of two pontoon boats used to ferry visitors in 15-minute trips across the emerald lake to reach the caverns.
He also drives a tour bus up the winding switchback-filled dirt road to the visitor center and cavern entry.
Lehman said he started working at Lake Shasta Caverns in 2016 when the lake’s water level was low and getting lower.
“We were about 185 feet from the top, the second lowest in the lake’s history,” he said. “This year, we’re down even farther than that. Pretty low.”
“Even if they drained [the lake] to its lowest point, there would still be a lot of water,” Lehman told The Epoch Times.
When the Cavern Princess had reached its destination, Lehman stepped off the gangway and tied the craft with a rope.
He then loaded a small group of tourists into the bus and drove them to the cavern entrance at the visitor center, where tour guide Dillon Caetano met them.
Inside the caverns felt like going back thousands of years through a subterranean landscape of stone columns called stalactites and stalagmites.
“Once every five years, this lake will fill up,” Caetano said. “I’m hoping for and anticipating 20 more feet. That would be awesome. Any water is good.”
“It never disappears. It gets low because it’s California.”
Still, Jennifer Kernan, a server who works at the Old Mill Eatery and Smokehouse in Shasta Lake, said the 2020 drought directly impacted boat ramp access.
“It was horrible. I was working out there helping move docks,” Kernan told The Epoch Times. “I helped dig stairs in the sides of the hills for the customers” at the ramp at Bridge Bay.
“We were worried because last year we weren’t sure how much it would rain. We still have a lot of snowfall. So once that melts, we'll be pretty good this season,” Kernan said.
“We'll get a few years of it, and the lake will go back down again.”
Lacking a ground table or aquifer, Lugo said the city’s main benefit with the January storms was the complete saturation of the ground around the lake.
“So all these little tributaries are now feeding the lake. Last year, everything was dry,” she said.
“The ground is a big sponge. The sponge has to go up before the tributaries are full.”
The most telling damage caused by the drought has been the loss of trees and creeks where birds and small wildlife would come to drink.
“If you were a raccoon, you had to get to somebody’s dog water or go a mile further to a creek,” Watkins said.
“I had a hawk that tried to get into my horse tank. When birds get into a tank, they can’t get out. Same with the ground squirrels.”
Watkins said he lost 10 acres and five “monster ponderosa pines” 120 years old at his house.
“I’ve fallen three and have three more to go,” Watkins said.
Water Wars
“Water is a very interesting subject in the state,” Doyle noted.“It’s become a real political game regarding who controls the water. The water wars in California have always been here.”
Lugo said that until the state government implements more efficient and equitable management policies at Shasta Lake, “I feel like with the policies you see on a state level, we’re always going to be in a drought.”
“I don’t think we will ever use as much water as we want.”
Watkins summed up the situation with an old Mark Twain saying: “Whiskey is for drinking. Water is for fighting.”
“I may have the quote a little bit wrong,” Watkins said. “But it is so true.”
