South Bay water officials said Monday overall reservoir levels remain healthy despite a significant amount of water being lost to evaporation this summer.
Santa Clara Valley Water said the local water supply is healthy at 85% capacity for nine reservoirs, but in May and June, evaporation removed almost 560 million gallons of potential drinking water countywide, the district said.
"That number may seem like a large number, but it's something that we should be expecting given the evaporation for this time of the month as well as our very high reservoir storage levels," Valley Water engineer Julio Maravilla said.
In other words, the more water in reservoirs, the higher the evaporation rate.
Valley Water said this kind of evaporation is normal, and the region is lucky thanks to all the winter rain that filled up the reservoirs.
"It's something that we’re keeping an eye on," Maravilla said. "We’re planning for it, but our reserve storage remains at a pretty healthy level."
Valley Water said the reservoirs are still holding 17.5 billion gallons of water right now.
Get a weekly recap of the latest San Francisco Bay Area housing news. Sign up for NBC Bay Area’s Housing Deconstructed newsletter.
