Northern California lake severely low

Folsom Lake, located in the Sacramento area, provides drinking water to hundreds of thousands of people. The lake, however, is now at its lowest point in years, at just below 17 percent of capacity. The last time the lake had a point this low was during the great drought of 1977.

Although the lake only has 162,000 gallons of water in it, the lake’s operators are still releasing 800 acre-feet of water a day. Operators began limiting the amount of water flow on Thursday, in order to conserve water until El Nino hits.

“I will remain concerned until we have a nice snowpack and a good amount of rainfall coming in,” Marcus Yasutake, environmental and water resources director for Folsom, told The Sacramento Bee.

Although the amount of water in the lake is at a critically low level, officials believe they can continue serving nearby residents’ water needs.