mississipi, muddy and wide and flowing. There was foam forming and dirt on the foam, my kid thought it looked like coffee with foam and cocoa.
I figured out how the fish got there: they swam up stream when there was water flowing. Probably last in 2005 according to some usgs data I scanned.
[Added later: or they could have come from the Irvine Lake upstream. In any case they
must have been there for a while, in their shrinking pool, for some time; last rains were in
2005.]
[Added later: or they could have come from the Irvine Lake upstream. In any case they
must have been there for a while, in their shrinking pool, for some time; last rains were in
2005.]
Amazing.
Wonderful new green and cleaned rockcliffs.
Water is great. Maybe more soon. Obviously hydroplaning,hitting a puddle
at 80mph, are hazardous, along with generally lengthened braking distance, but you can control those risks by driving carefully.
Almost got stuck at the Sandberg parking lot. 4wd is good.
tried the lolita access to the dam, met a former damkeeper (or
his wife), helped her close the chainlink.
Then met a couple that had parkedwhere I thought it restricted, and
so had turned around, and told them about 'our' lot. later saw them
when I hiked back to our car.
Surprised by very pleasant social interactions.
Villa Park, Southern California
Villa Park Dam is on Santiago Creek in Orange County, California and is used for fish and wildlife protection and flood control purposes. Construction was completed in 1963. At normal levels it has a surface area of 480 acres. It is owned by County Of Orange.
Villa Park is rock fill. Its height is 118 feet with a length of 119 feet. Normal storage is 15600 acre feet. It drains an area of 83.4 square miles.
http://www.ocwatersheds.com/envres/Rainfall/rainfalldata.asp
cleanup
In November 2006 we entered into an oral agreement with the Serrano Water District ("SWD") in Orange County, California to install an ELIXIR system at the Villa Park Dam (near Anaheim, California) for testing of the system by processing flood water residue behind the dam. Under our arrangement, scientists and engineers from California State University at Fullerton are coordinating with the SWD to trace and record the cleaning efficiency for the various contaminants in the water (thought to be iron, manganese and algae) against the flow rate capacity of the ELIXIR system. We designed the system placed at the dam site for research purposes. It contains a variety of sampling sites within the system to extract and test water outside the system, as well as a suite of internal water quality measurement instruments to monitor the cleaning process.
Villa Park Dam is operated by Orange County Flood Control and is designed to check the flow of flood waters from several small watersheds in the northern Santa Ana Mountains. The dam is capable of impounding up to 15,000 acre-feet of water (4.9 billion gallons), although its purpose is to check and safely release the waters during periods of heavy rainfall into Santiago Creek, where it is diverted to groundwater recharge ponds or allowed to discharge to the ocean. Serrano Water District has rights to 3,000 acre-feet of water from the impoundment pool. Until now, impounded waters have been released to flow downstream during storms. However, under the project, rain and other water will flow down creeks and collect to form a useable pool of water behind the dam. This water slowly degrades during the summer and has been shown to be very septic and has exceptionally high values of iron and manganese. This water has been prohibitively expensive to treat for drinking water.
In May 2007 we placed an ELIXIR system at the dam and began processing runoff water. We began a thorough evaluation of every component in the system during this testing period. Data are being used to evaluate the baseline water quality to be treated, as part of an ongoing water collection and analysis study of the ELIXIR water treatment system. Several testing and research programs to evaluate the treatment system were implemented.
The SWD pilot project was terminated in October 2008 once the retention reservoir behind Villa Park Dam was drained for periodic cleaning. With the exception of testing for Total Dissolved Solids ("TDS"), all other testing was completed in compliance with California's Title 22 certification program. TDS levels could not be properly tested since the reservoir was being drained and the dynamics of the forced water flow agitated sediment normally deposited on the bottom to mix with the draining water, producing readings above the testing thresholds.
Life is good.
