Of all the water that flows out of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, how much can our infrastructure actually capture into storage or groundwater recharge, and how much is simply beyond what the pumps and conveyance can handle? Computed DAILY 2015-2025 (a flood pulse over a few days cannot be captured at a fixed pumping rate even when the monthly total looks small). Outflow above the real D-1641 environmental/water-quality requirement is the capturable surplus.
SHARE OF SURPLUS OUTFLOW OUR INFRASTRUCTURE CAN HANDLE
surplus = outflow above the D-1641 environmental requirement; limited by DAILY pumping + conveyance rates and current levers
—
What do we do with outflow — by water year (MAF)
Environmental / WQ requirement (D-1641, must flow out) Surplus our infrastructure CAN capture Surplus LOST (exceeds daily infrastructure)
Each bar = a full water year of total Delta outflow. Teal is the protected environmental requirement. Green is surplus that current daily pumping/conveyance could capture; red is surplus that flows to sea because on those days it exceeds infrastructure capacity. WY2015/WY2025 partial.
The environmental requirement is real but simplified. The teal base is the D-1641 minimum monthly Net Delta Outflow by Sacramento-Valley water-year type (Jul-Jan numeric standards; Feb-Jun X2/salinity-governed, approximated at the ~7,100 cfs Chipps floor). It is the quantified regulatory minimum and does not include unmeasured ecosystem uses; the requirement is a STACK of species/OMR/water-quality rules of which this is an envelope.
Levers
All capture is DAILY-rate-limited (cfs), which is the real bottleneck — groundwater/storage volume is a willing sink. Raise pumping, conveyance, and FIRO to see the captured share climb and the lost volume fall. That gap is the infrastructure/FIRO policy opportunity.