Santa Rosa staff: Lake Pillsbury storage reduced after PG&E gate limits; recycled water production steady

City water staff told the Board of Public Utilities that operations upstream of the Russian River are changing after PG&E lost the ability to operate slide gates at Lake Pillsbury, a condition that reduces that reservoir’s effective storage and is prompting requests to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission for temporary and potentially longer‑term variances.

Peter Martin, deputy director for water resources, said Lake Pillsbury was about 57,000 acre‑feet as of the presentation and that PG&E can no longer operate gate equipment that allowed storing an additional roughly 20,000 acre‑feet in spring and summer. Martin said that loss represents approximately 25% of the reservoir’s total storage and that PG&E filed for a variance from required minimum streamflows under its FERC license in February. That variance request would allow reductions of minimum flows in the project’s east branch of the Russian River from roughly 75 cubic feet per second (cfs) down to as low as 25…