ICYMI 4/6/17
How will we fund California’s Water Future?
Two pieces in the Sacramento Bee today dive into the struggle to pay for California’s water infrastructure.
Public needs answers on repairing Oroville dam, Delta levees and California Aqueduct – (Sacramento Bee – April 5, 2017)
Jonas Minton, former deputy director of the Department of Water Resources and water policy adviser at the Planning and Conservation League explains that besides the $500 million to $1 billion needed for Oroville repairs, $2 – 3 billion is needed for levee repairs in the Delta. Repairs are also needed at the Clifton Court Forebay where the existing Delta pumps operate. Besides those expenses, additional funding is needed to repair subsidence that has impacted the efficiency of the California Aqueduct and to prepare the San Luis Reservoir for an earthquake.
Minton concludes:
“The Oroville Dam emergency shows that California cannot ignore the multiple safety and financial threats to one if its most important water infrastructures. It is time for the Legislature and the public to find out when these repairs will be made, how much they will cost and who will pay.”
Mighty L.A. water agency throws financial weight behind Sites Reservoir (Sacramento Bee – April 5, 2017)
A second story looks at moves by the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California to invest in the proposed Sites Reservoir in the northern Sacramento Valley. This project would create 50,000 acre-feet of water storage at a remote location on the Glenn-Colusa county line.
“The advocacy group Restore the Delta, however, said Metropolitan is simply angling to take more water from the north. “They are really coming in as an outside power to control that watershed…the Sacramento River watershed,” said the group’s director Barbara Barrigan-Parrilla.”