COLD SPRINGS 250 ACRE FEET PILOT
PROJECT
81.5 Million Gallons
WATER SAVINGS FOR COUNTY PARKS
SITE RAINWATER AMOUNTS AND
CALCULATIONS
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Using Cold Springs Creek that flows out of the foothills
across E. Mountain Drive we can gather more water than
can be used by 50 county parks. The watershed feeding
these two points is 3,000' to10,000 wide and about
10,000' deep. From East Mountain Drive at the Cold
Springs crossing, up to Camino Cielo at the top of the
foothills...
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Fact is, on the coast we have nearly as much drainage
area as the Cachuma reservoir watershed, and more
rainfall... the difference is this water runs off in creeks and
culverts to the ocean, instead of into a lake. If we added
up all major creeks on the Santa Barbara coast, the
combined watershed is over 70 square miles.
The area we are concerned with is completely uninhabited and
consists of mostly sandstone hills, brush, creeks, pools,
tributaries and a few hiking trails. We are talking about 2,295
ares of watershed, all draining to the crossing at E. Mountain
Drive. We are using a 30% coverage number, so we assign 30%
of this area as impermeable and this drains to the Crossing at E.
Mountain Drive. That means 688 acres of usable drainage,
creating 688 AF of water from one foot of rain, all draining across
the East Mountain Drive crossing.
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My design here involves collecting runoff water at the E.
Mountain Drive Crossing (Crossing) where it flows across East
Mountain Drive. At this point Cold Springs Creek is a boulder
strune creek with house sized boulders to refrigerator sized
rocks lining and filling the channel.
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Our plan to capture part of this relatively clean creek water
where it crosses the road. From here pipe the water out of the
channel and down to the debris basin 2,000 feet to the South.
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Across this area there are three open areas owned by the county
that we recommend as spots for cistern storage of this water. A
200' X 300' X 14' cistern will hold 19.2 acre feet (AF) so three will
store 57.6 AF.
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