Sacramento-area water officials warned Wednesday that Folsom Lake could be 96 percent empty by next January under a federal plan to increase water releases.

t’s just bad. It’s just bad,” said Tom Gohring, executive director of the Sacramento Region Water Forum, a coalition of water agencies.

Gohring spoke at a meeting of the State Water Resources Board about a proposal by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation.

Reclamation officials have said they plan to begin releasing more fresh water from Folsom Lake and Lake Oroville in order to push back the saltwater that infiltrates the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta during drought conditions.

“We are having to make a lot of difficult decisions,” said Erin Curtis, a Reclamation spokeswoman. “And releasing extra water from Folsom right now is one of those.”

A historically low snowpack has already left Folsom and several other California reservoirs at below-average levels.

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