No drought in Mendocino County, but task force keeping watch

MENDOCINO CO., 5/26/26 — Mendocino County is not in a drought.

That was the message Tuesday, May 19, from county Department of Transportation staff, who delivered the first formal drought briefing since the county adopted its Drought Resilience Plan on May 20, 2025 — nearly a year ago to the day.

The numbers are good. Lake Mendocino has held above 70% of its seasonal storage target since late October. Only one dry well has been reported to the state this water year, within the normal range of zero to two. Coastal rainfall, measured across the Big-Navarro-Garcia rivers watershed, has stayed above 80% of historical averages for most of the year. The U.S. Drought Monitor lists most of the county as drier than normal but short of any drought classification.

All three metrics the county uses to set its response level point to Stage 1: monitor.

“We are in a Stage 1 response,” said Josie Slavitt, an environmental compliance specialist with the Department of Transportation who tracks the drought triggers under the state-mandated plan.

Jeanine Jones, interstate resources manager for the California Department of Water Resources, gave the statewide picture and a warning about the El Niño headlines now circulating. A strong El Niño does not reliably mean a wet California winter, she said. She pointed to water year 2016, when one of the strongest El Niño events on record fell in the fifth year of the 2012-2017 drought.

“When you hear we’re going to have a strong El Niño, that it’ll be very wet,” Jones said, “you want to take that with a big grain of salt.”

One result from the past year drew little notice at the time. County staff learned about a state program offering water storage tanks and passed the information to partners — the Mendocino City Community Services District, the Cahto Tribe and local fire safe councils — and 450 tanks reached rural households across the county.

Linda MacElwee of the Mendocino County Resource Conservation District joined the meeting by Zoom to say new stream gauges are now running in the Navarro River watershed through the Navarro River Flow Enhancement Partnership, a project with the Nature Conservancy and Trout Unlimited. Similar work is underway in the South Fork Eel, she said.

The General Government Committee voted unanimously to accept the presentations. District 2 Supervisor Maureen Mulheren, who chairs the committee, and District 4 Supervisor Bernie Norvell, serving as the committee’s alternate member for the rest of 2026, also asked staff to look at whether future drought briefings could reach broader audiences than a formal committee meeting. Farming and rural residents, Mulheren noted, do not always show up to county hearings — even when the topic is their water.