During the drought, Californians often asked why the state wasn’t building more reservoirs. On Tuesday, the state finally began taking a major step toward that goal, unveiling a list of 12 huge new water projects — from massive new dams in the north to expanded groundwater banks in the south — that will compete for $2.7 billion in state bond funding for new water storage projects.
The money comes from Proposition 1, a $7.5 billion water bond overwhelmingly passed by voters in November 2014 during the depths of the state’s historic 2011-2016 drought.
Monday was the deadline for water agencies to submit applications for storage projects to the California Water Commission, an agency in Sacramento run by a nine-member board appointed by Gov. Jerry Brown.
The commission will decide by June 2018 which projects receive bond funding, as well as how much, if any, each will receive, after rating them on their public benefits.
“We’re excited about the projects that have applied,” said Chris Orrock, a spokesman for the commission. “They are providing benefits to the people of California, and that’s what this program is aimed at funding.”
As expected, there is more demand than money. All 12 projects would cost roughly $13.1 billion to construct — five times as much money as is available under the bond. That means some won’t get built, and others will need to find the bulk of their funding from federal or local sources — which could include raising water rates or taxes, which local voters may or may not approve.
The list of applicants includes many ideas that have been around for years. Among them:
- Sites Reservoir: A proposed $5 billion reservoir in Colusa County, roughly 100 miles north of Napa, the reservoir would be built “off stream” in a valley and would divert water from the Sacramento River, holding 1.8 million acre feet. That’s enough water for the needs of 9 million people a year. It would rank Sites as the seventh largest reservoir in the state, roughly the size of San Luis between Gilroy and Los Banos.
- Los Vaqueros: The Contra Costa Water District is proposing to raise the earthen dam at Los Vaqueros reservoir by 55 feet, increasing the reservoir’s storage capacity from 160,000 acre feet to 275,000-acre feet, enough water to meet the annual needs of 1.4 million people. The $914 million project has a dozen Bay Area partners that would put up some of the money and receive some of the water as drought insurance. Among them are the Santa Clara Valley Water District, East Bay Municipal Utility District and the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission. The project was endorsed Monday by a coalition of six prominent environmental groups — including the Nature Conservancy, Audubon Society and Planning and Conservation League — because some of the water would go to Central Valley wetland refuges for ducks, geese and other wildlife, in addition to people and farms.
- Pacheco Pass: The Santa Clara Valley Water District is hoping to build a new reservoir in southern Santa Clara County near Pacheco Pass, along with a dam up to 300 feet high. The reservoir, which would cost roughly $900 million, would hold 130,000 acre-feet of water — enough to meet the water needs of 650,000 people for a year. The project would replace an existing small reservoir of 6,000 acre-feet that is used to recharge farmers’ groundwater.
- Temperance Flat: The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation has proposed building a 665-foot-high dam on the San Joaquin River in the Sierra foothills in Fresno County. The $3 billion project, which would construct the second-tallest dam in California, behind Oroville Dam, would create a reservoir of 1.3 million acre-feet, enough water for 6.5 million people a year.
- Semitropic: The groundwater district near Bakersfield, which stores water for agencies from the Bay Area to Los Angeles, has proposed an expansion.
- Kern Fan: The Irvine Ranch Water District in Irvine, which serves 380,000 residents of Orange County, is proposing to build a $171 million groundwater storage project at the south end of the Kern River.
- San Diego: The city of San Diego, which wants to produce one-third of its water by 2035 from recycled wastewater, is planning a $1.2 billion project to purify it and deliver it to Miramar Reservoir.
- Centennial Reservoir: The Nevada Irrigation District in Grass Valley is proposing building a 275-foot-tall dam and 110,000 acre-foot reservoir on the Bear River near Colfax in Placer County.
Other projects were proposed from the Sacramento Regional Water Authority, the Inland Empire Utilities Agency and other water districts.
This week, supporters of the various projects lined up to sing their praises.
“California faces an uncertain future of new and different water challenges and needs a project like Sites that offers essential benefits,” said Colusa County Supervisor Kim Dolbow Vann.
In a letter to the commission, former U.S. Rep. George Miller, an East Bay Democrat, said: “Expanding Los Vaqueros Reservoir is an innovative project that embodies what the voters approved when they passed Proposition 1.”
Under the terms of the initiative, the state will pay up to 50 percent of each storage project it funds. The commission will evaluate the applications, some of which are hundreds of pages long and which cost millions of dollars in engineering studies, computer modeling and other work to compile. Once the money is handed out, it could take up to 10 years for agencies to find the rest of the money, complete engineering studies, acquire land and take other steps to finish the projects.
Other money in Proposition 1 was earmarked for water recycling, desalination, watershed protection, flood control, water conservation projects on farms and cities, and cleaning up contaminated groundwater. That money is being handed out by a variety of agencies — from the State Water Resources Control Board to the Department of Fish and Wildlife to the state Department of Water Resources in grant programs.
Environmentalists generally prefer underground storage to building new dams, noting that it is cheaper, does not have evaporation, and doesn’t kill fish and wildlife. They argue that the new dams proposed for rivers, in particular, are problematic and not likely to yield much water because the state already has 1,200 dams and most of the best sites were taken decades ago.
“Many of these projects never penciled out when the beneficiaries had to pay the total costs,” said Jonas Minton, water policy adviser with the Planning and Conservation League in Sacramento. “Now in many cases they are asking the public to subsidize additional water for them.”
Proposition 1 was endorsed by the state Republican and Democratic parties, along with Gov. Jerry Brown, U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the California Chamber of Commerce, Silicon Valley Leadership Group and major unions and water districts. It was opposed by some environmental groups and commercial fishing organizations worried about the impact of new dams on fisheries.
Voters approved it 67-33 percent.
Asked why it has taken so long to distribute the money for storage — which could include not only new reservoirs, but also underground storage — Orrock said that because billions of dollars of public money are at stake, the language of Proposition 1, written by the Legislature, gave the water commission until December 2016 to hold hearings and draw up detailed rules and criteria for handing out the money.
“There were certain requirements in the measure that required the commission to do outreach and develop new regulations for how the program works,” Orrock said. “We met the deadline and are on track.”
Read the WSIP application summary.
