“Republic of Thirst” is a three-part series made possible by a generous fellowship from the Robert Novak Foundation. Part I of examined the debate over how California’s scarce water resources should be allocated. Part III will examine whether those resources can be expanded through technological innovations like desalination. Part II examines whether more can be done to store and manage the water that falls naturally on the Golden State.

***

The water burst out through the spillway in a constant gush, a mad torrent of white, unstoppable and ferocious. It swept down the smooth concrete — then pounded into the new cracks in the failed spillway, sending a spray hundreds of feet into the air and carving a new chasm in the hillside.

Alongside the ruined structure, new channels appeared in the earthen emergency overflow spillway, strewn with rip rack rock that had been dropped by helicopter to keep the hillside from collapsing, to save the cities downstream.

Viewed from a small airplane above the Oroville Dam — at 770 feet, the highest in the U.S. — in March 2017, the future of water storage in California looked doubtful. That year, California’s deep drought was broken by record rainfall, filling that dam and many others.

As water continued to pour in, authorities opened the spillway gates as wide as possible. But the concrete cracked, and the main spillway failed — spectacularly. The earthen emergency spillway, used for the first time ever, eroded itself and nearly failed.

Initially, local authorities evacuated nearly 200,000 people downstream of the dam. But a herculean effort by engineers managed to save and stabilize the emergency spillway, averting a massive disaster.

Still, the crisis provoked questions about whether state authorities had mismanaged Oroville Dam or ignored warnings about the structural integrity of the spillway — or even of the dam itself, which, some claimed, had already begin to leak.

To critics of dams, especially among environmentalists, the events at Oroville Dam were further proof of the dangers of dams and reservoirs — which, they argued, stored water only at great cost to nature and great risk to human life.

To others, especially advocates of industry and agriculture, the Oroville near-disaster was proof the state government had neglected California’s infrastructure needs in favor of redistribution, water conservation mandates, or flashy pet projects.

***

Life as we know it in California today would be unthinkable without the extensive system of dams, reservoirs, pumps and aqueducts that make urban life possible and that have transformed the drought-prone Central Valley into the most productive farming region on earth.

And yet it is a system that remains almost frozen in time, constructed largely during the early 20th century, the New Deal era, and the postwar boom that followed — designed for a population of 10 million, in a state now reaching 40 million.

It is also a system replete with ironies. The state that gave Ronald Reagan to America, and with him a new brand of unapologetic conservatism, is one in which the survival of the population depends on massive investments in infrastructure — albeit paid for, ultimately, by water users themselves.

Moreover, the liberal cities that have incubated America’s utopian environmental movement for decades could not exist without ongoing human intervention in the environment that brings water from mountaintop to tap.

For decades, policymakers have debated whether to build new reservoirs. One project, the Auburn Dam, was authorized by Congress in 1965 for flood control, but later abandoned over structural and environmental concerns. Numerous other proposals have been studied for decades, with little progress at the state or federal level — though local authorities have built their own projects, such as the Los Vaqueros Reservoir in the East San Francisco Bay, one of the few projects environmentalists have not opposed (though many have since opposed its expansion.)

Another project, the Sites Reservoir, has been debated for decades. Rather than capturing water by blocking a river with a dam, the reservoir would be built in a valley with minimal water and would receive excess water during floods, relieving pressure on other dams and allowing them to store more.

As Robert Dolezal of the California Water Alliance, a non-profit advocacy group funded by the state’s business community, told Breitbart News:

Sites Reservoir … reduces the flood potential of the Sacramento River … and it allows the entire Central Valley system, all the other major dams in the north — Trinity, Shasta, Oroville, and Folsom — to rebalance … [A]s much as 3 million more acre-feet of water can be stored in Trinity, Shasta, Oroville and Folsom because they don’t have to prevent flooding of Sacramento and other downriver communities, rebalancing the system. A similar proposal to raise the height of the Shasta Dam has a similar purpose, as would Temperance Flat on the San Joquin River near Fresno.

But critics say these dams would achieve little for storage, while hurting fish populations and destroying Native American heritage sites. They call such projects “vampire dams” — “because they so often rise from the dead” after being rejected by state leaders, one wrote recently.

The divisions over water storage do not match partisan divisions on other issues. In the Central Valley, Democrats tend to be as vociferous in their advocacy for water storage as Republicans are. And in the past, Republicans were as skeptical of such projects as urban Democrats are today.

Regardless of political predilection, during years of drought, one thought pervades public consciousness: how much water is left? Residents anxiously turn to the state’s reservoirs as they slowly drain, and dry.

The consequences of poor planning, and political infighting, have become clear — from a distance, at least for now. Across the ocean, the South African city of Cape Town, Africa’s most advanced and cosmopolitan city, provides a new warning. Its population has doubled over the past two decades, but it has not built much new water storage capacity — thanks, in part, to the fact that the national government has authority over water and the local government is controlled by the opposition. As a result, the city nearly ran out of water in 2018, forcing severe restrictions on residents.

That foreshadows California’s grim fate — if it cannot find solutions now.

***

“Droughts are nature’s fault. Water shortages are our fault.”

Rep. Tom McClintock (R-CA) greeted me in his office on a frigid Tuesday in December. He is one of the last seven Republicans left in the 53-strong California congressional delegation after Democrats won the midterm elections.

The hallway was strewn with the furniture of departing GOP colleagues, but for McClintock, it was business as usual. And the business at hand was water storage in California.

A continent away, frantic negotiations were continuing on the eve of the State Water Resources Control Board (SWRCB) decision on the Bay-Delta Plan, the controversial new policy that will mandate that rivers in the San Joaquin watershed must have an average of 40% “unimpeded flow” during the spring months — a decision that shifts precious water from farmers and cities to the environment in an effort to save threatened fish populations.

McClintock’s office was well-apprised of the state of talks between the various parties, including outgoing Governor Jerry Brown and incoming governor Gavin Newsom. The two liberal Democrats asked the SWRCB to postpone its decision, originally scheduled for November, to Dec. 12 to leave time for voluntary agreements with local water authorities. (The day following my meeting with McClintock, the SWRCB voted to approve the Bay-Delta Plan, despite some agreements being reached.)

The governors’ real priority, some skeptical observers claimed, was to secure enough water for the California Waterfix — the “Twin Tunnels” project that will divert water from the Sacramento River under the California Delta to be pumped south.

But that is a fight about allocation. McClintock focused on storage, noting that the cheapest and best way to solve the state’s water problems — measured in cost per acre-foot — is to build more reservoirs rather than letting much of the state’s rainfall run out to sea. McClintock reminded me that it has been 40 years since California’s last dam, the New Melones Dam, was completed in 1978.

The state’s largest water reservoir — by far — is the natural reservoir provided by its Cascades and Sierra Nevada Mountain Range snowpack. That dwarfs the man-made facilities and, through gradual snowmelt in spring, continuously refills the man-made reservoirs long after winter rains and snows have stopped for the season.

Though smaller than nature’s own reservoir, California’s system of man-made reservoirs is vast — and complex. The Public Policy Institute of California notes that “state and federal agencies manage 240 large reservoirs that account for 60% of the state’s storage capacity,” with the rest of the state’s reservoirs owned and operated by local water agencies, or by private entities for use on private lands.

The California Department of Water Resources notes: “On average, California receives about 200 million acre-feet of water per year in the form of rain and snow.” (It adds that the state rarely experiences an “average” year.) The state’s reservoirs can capture about 42 million acre-feet of that — roughly one-fifth. The rest seeps into underground aquifers, or flows out to the sea.

Dolezal notes that California uses an average of about 80 million acre-feet of water per year, and over the past two decades, roughly half of that is preserved for environmental use — dropping to 40% in the most recent drought, with agriculture using just over 40%, in both wet and dry years.

The reservoir system has a variety of purposes — and storage is just one of them. Many dams and reservoirs were built for flood control.

The state’s capital city of Sacramento, which sits at the confluence of the American and Sacramento Rivers, was inundated during the Great Flood of 1862, which “turned enormous regions of the state into inland seas for months,” Scientific American recalled. That event, and others like it, fueled enthusiasm for building dams.

California’s dams are also multipurpose facilities, providing hydroelectric power generation; water storage and supply; recreation; and flood management protection.

But tn times of drought, such as the unusually severe drought that gripped the state from 2011 to 2017, storage is the most salient priority. And McClintock believes there is too little of it.

He and others argue that California can add to its storage capacity relatively easily — not just by building new dams, but expanding existing ones, such as the Shasta Dam, one of the major reservoirs in the federal Central Valley Project, which supplies water to farmers hundreds of miles south.

Shasta Dam was built under President Franklin Delano Roosevelt during World War Two, reaching 602 feet, though it was designed to be even bigger. (An even bigger dam was envisioned for the Klamath River, but was canceled in the 1970s; today dams along the Klamath are set to be torn down.)

“Simply finishing the Shasta Dam to its design height [of 800 feet] could add nine million acre-feet to the system,” McClintock says. Indeed, the Trump administration, is proposing to raise the dam by 18.5 feet, increasing the capacity of the dam by 7 percent (630,000 acre-feet) — if tiny salamander species that environmentalists wish to have declared “endangered” do not stop plans for expansion.

Another proposal is to build the Sites Reservoir in the foothills west of the small town of Maxwell, just over an hour north of Sacramento. As noted earlier, the Sites Reservoir would store 500,000 acre-feet of “off-stream” water, meaning that it would not dam an active river, but rather be a site for water from other sites to be stored as available and used as needed. Proponents argue that it would contribute to environmental quality as well as the state’s storage capacity.

Crucially, the Sites Reservoir appears to have some startup funding. As much as half of the money will come from a special water bond passed by voters in Proposition 1 of 2014, which set aside $2.7 billion (of $7.5 billion) for water storage projects. The rest of the project would theoretically be funded by long-term contracts for water not reserved for public use.

Jim Watson, general manager of the Sites Project Authority, told Breitbart News that he was confident the project would proceed, given the support of the voters for water storage when they passed Proposition 1. He noted that $816 million had been set aside for Sites — the largest project funded by the proposition bond, compared to several competing projects. He added that local water agencies had also been working with state and federal authorities in preparing studies for the project.

“Some of the water that will be produced from the project will be dedicated for environmental projects,” he said, nothing that some water would help fish, and some would supply existing refuges that support waterfowl species.

Given that “no formal opposition” was raised by environmentalists during the approval process for Sites, he said, he did not anticipate significant opposition from them — though they were skeptical the reservoir would provide the water promised. Watson said the project was consulting with environmental interests to allay those concerns, and to explore their thoughts about how the water should be managed once it had been stored, in the reservoir. He said the management process the project had developed would include local communities and Native American groups. And he added that the Sites Reservoir will have “statewide reach” by helping recharge depleted aquifers throughout California — an urgent necessity once the state’s new groundwater management requirements go into effect in 2020.

“Three years ago, the concept of a local agency taking on such a project, that had been on the board since the 1950s, seemed pretty remote,” he said. “We have now become the state’s lead agency for complying with environmental requirements.

“We’ve come a long way … we’re starting to put the pieces together,” he added with evident pride.

Likewise, Erin Curtis of the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation told Breitbart News, “There is a lot of momentum for the project right now.

“And obviously,” she added, “for any project in California, especially related to water, there’s going to be some discussions with environmental organizations and local landowners, but it did get Proposition 1 funding.”

Curtis described the value of the project in terms environmentalists might understand: given that the state’s climate is changing, and becoming warmer, that means more of California’s annual precipitation is falling as rain, rather than snow.

Without that frozen, natural reservoir, the system must build new capacity to store water — or else it will be lost, not just to industry and agriculture, but to environmental and recreational users as well.

“We have been getting less and less water in the form of snowpack, which means less storage — we get more rain, so we can’t store it.” Sites, she said, provides “another place to put that water.”

Critics, however, say that state authorities allocated just enough money to the project to make it appear as if they are spending money on water storage, while not quite enough to allow the reservoir to be built.

McClintock is among the skeptics. He told Breitbart News that he has been hearing talk about the Sites Reservoir for decades, and that Californians are constantly told that construction is imminent. But somehow, that reservoir, and others, are never built.

He blamed the state and federal environmental laws and regulations that make dams more difficult, and more expensive, to build. “Until we change the environmental laws, construction is cost prohibitive,” he told me.

That would be perfectly fine with many environmental groups, for whom opposition to dams has become something of an article of faith over the past several decades. Dams were once thought to provide an environmentally-friendly source of renewable energy, through hydroelectric power. But they destroy whatever habitat finds itself submerged by reservoirs; impede fish migration; and — if managed poorly — create new hazards, such as mechanical failure.

McClintock dismissesdconcerns about Oroville. “No dam, no work of man is perfect,” he said. “We make mistakes, we learn, we go forward.”

That is, dam projects would go forward — if there were the political will to build them.

The lack of will has less to do with engineering challenges, he maintains, than it does with politics, bureaucracy, and lawsuits by radical environmentalist groups.

Environmentalists have made no secret of their opposition to the Sites Reservoir. The Sierra Club has cast the project as a fatal threat to the Sacramento River, declaring:

The Sites Reservoir would be filled by significant water diversions from the Sacramento River, which could harm the river’s dynamic flow-based ecosystems. More than 20,000 acres of federal and state public lands along the river that were acquired to protect and restore the river’s riparian and aquatic habitats, could be degraded by the diversions. In addition to reducing flows in the Sacramento River, the reservoir would drown up to 15,000 acres of existing oak woodlands, grasslands, wetlands, and agricultural land in the western Sacramento Valley. Impacts associated with the reservoir footprint would harm the federally protected bald eagle, a host of other sensitive wildlife species, several rare plants, and significant historical and cultural resources. The Sites Project Authority, a consortium of water districts and local governments, claim that the reservoir could store up to 1.8 million acre feet of water (making it the seventh largest reservoir in the state) and reliably yield about a half million acre feet of water annually for communities, farms, and the environment. But this yield estimate fails to adequately consider the effects of climate change, chronic drought, and reservoir evaporation on project storage and deliveries. …