$1 billion coming to Bay Area for two new dams

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During California’s recent five-year drought, it was common to hear people asking why the state doesn’t build more dams.

On Tuesday, flush with cash from voters, the administration of Gov. Jerry Brown is expected to finally do just that, committing nearly $1 billion to build two huge dam projects in the Bay Area, and another $1.5 billion for six more big water projects from the Sacramento Valley to Bakersfield.

The California Water Commission, whose eight members are appointed by the governor, will likely vote to fund $2.5 billion overall for the eight projects — four new dams and four groundwater storage proposals.

Among the proposed awards: $485 million to the Santa Clara Valley Water District to construct a new 319-foot-tall dam at Pacheco Pass in rural southern Santa Clara County, and $459 million to the Contra Costa Water District to raise the height of the dam at Los Vaqueros Reservoir in eastern Contra Costa County by 55 feet, increasing the lake’s size by about 70 percent. The new funding would pay roughly half the cost of each project.

The money comes from Proposition 1, a state water bond approved by voters in November, 2014. It is believed to be the largest state commitment to build new dams in California since 1960, when Brown’s father, former Gov. Pat Brown, was in office.

That year, the former governor convinced voters to pass a ballot measure with the same name, Proposition 1, which provided $1.75 billion to construct Oroville Dam and much of the State Water Project.

But unlike that measure, which funded dams and concrete canals, this one was designed by state lawmakers to also include underground storage, where water is put into large aquifers in wet years and pumped out during dry years. Underground storage is often cheaper than new above-ground reservoirs, and comes without evaporation problems. It also avoids environmental battles that arise when new dams are proposed to block rivers, which can kill salmon, and other fish and wildlife.

Armando Quintero, chairman of the California Water Commission and a former national park ranger who also works as president of the Marin Municipal Water District Board, said the state needs to diversify the way it stores water.

“People think of reservoirs when they think of water storage. You can look at them and see them when they are full or empty,” he said. “Groundwater is abstract. But there is 25 times as much room in groundwater basins as in all the existing reservoirs in California.”

The bond includes $7.5 billion for a range of water projects, including desalination, conservation, storm water capture, water recycling and storage. After Tuesday, roughly $3.4 billion of the money will have been committed.

Last year, after the commission held dozens of meetings to write regulations creating a ranking system that would assign scores and cost-benefit ratios to issues from flood control to endangered species, 12 projects applied for the storage money.

Here are the final eight the commission will consider, with the amount of money its staff has recommended, ranked by their scores:

1) Pacheco Reservoir Expansion: $485 million. Total project cost: $969 million. The Santa Clara Valley Water District would expand a small reservoir on Pacheco Creek, at Pacheco Pass, increasing its size from 6,000 acre-feet to 140,000 acre-feet. The new dam would be 319 feet tall. The district would take water it now stores in nearby San Luis Reservoir and pipe it into the new reservoir, filling it during wet years.

2) South County Ag Program: $280 million. Total project cost: $373 million. The Sacramento Regional County Sanitation District would provide up to 50,000 acre-feet of recycled waste water a year to farmers for irrigation, reducing groundwater pumping in Sacramento County.

3) Los Vaqueros Reservoir Expansion: $459 million. Total project cost $980 million. The Contra Costa Water District would raise the height of the dam in eastern Contra Costa County by 55 feet to 273 feet high. That would expand the reservoir’s capacity from 160,000 acre-feet to 275,000 acre-feet, providing more water for Bay Area cities during droughts and some for wildlife refuges near Los Banos.

4) Temperance Flat Reservoir: $171 million. Total project cost: $2.6 billion. The project, proposed by cities, water agencies and counties in the San Joaquin Valley, would build a new dam on the San Joaquin river in the Sierra Nevada north of Sequoia-Kings Canyon National Park. The dam would be 665 feet high, the second tallest in California, and would store 1.2 million acre-feet of water.

5) Chino Basin Conjunctive Use Program: $207 million. Total project cost: $480 million. Proposed by the Inland Empire Utilities Agency, the project would build pipes, pumps and a treatment facility to put up to 15,000 acre-feet of recycled wastewater a year into a groundwater storage bank in San Bernardino County for use by local cities, businesses and farms.

6) Sites Reservoir: $1 billion. Total project cost: $5.2 billion. Officials from Glenn, Colusa and Sacramento counties and Sacramento Valley water agencies hope to build a massive new off-stream reservoir in Colusa County, filled with water piped from the Sacramento River. It would hold up to 1.8 million acre-feet, making it the seventh-largest reservoir in California.

7) Kern Fan Groundwater Storage Project: $86 million. Total project cost: $171 million. The Irvine Ranch Water District in Orange County and the Rosedale-Rio Bravo Water Storage District in Bakersfield are proposing to store up to 100,000 acre-feet of water in groundwater basins near Bakersfield in wet years and draw it out during droughts.

8) Willow Springs Water Bank: $124 million. Total project cost: $343 million. Expanding a groundwater bank 50 miles north of Los Angeles near Rosamond in Kern County would add 500,000 acre-feet of new storage. The project is also partly funded by private investors and CalPERS, the state’s main public pension fund.

Getting approval Tuesday doesn’t guarantee the projects will be built. The applicants have until Jan. 1, 2022 to come up with the rest of the money from increases in local water rates, federal grants or other sources. They must also obtain all permits, finish environmental studies, purchase land and secure water rights before the state will release its funding.

Related Articles Oroville Dam: A tour of two spillways, phase two “They now have a better license to go hunt,” said Jay Lund, director of the Center for Watershed Sciences at UC-Davis. “But there is still a lot of work to be done. Some of them probably will never get built.”

Because there is a mix of traditional storage and underground storage, common water adversaries have found something to like.

“We finally got some money now that can be used for infrastructure that has been sorely missing for a generation,” said Mike Wade, executive director of the California Farm Water Coalition.

Kyle Jones, a policy advocate for Sierra Club California, called the final recommendations “innovative.”

“I’m pleased that it wasn’t just a giveaway for the big dam projects that we don’t like,” he said.

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