Four years ago, California voters directed the government to update our state water system by passing Proposition 1, a $7 billion water bond that included clear guidelines for investing $2.7 billion in new reservoirs.
Voters expected billions of gallons of water to be added to our surface storage system. Sadly, with a dry start to winter and another drought looming, the state hasn’t spent a dime on the new storage it promised.
Standing in the way is the California Water Commission, which meets on Wednesday. So far, local agencies have submitted 11 water storage projects to the commission for approval. It rejected every single one.
According to the commission, no proposal has met the requirements laid out in Proposition 1 to deserve funding. As one of the principal authors of the measure, I disagree.
. . . Temperance Flat, northeast of Fresno, could provide water for farms and families while bringing an environmentally friendly source of power and recreation to California. Instead, 53 billion gallons of water the project would yield in an average year is wasted as it is flushed out to the ocean.
If Sites existed today in Colusa County, California could have captured more than 586 billion gallons of water since Oct. 1 – enough to supply 13.3 million Californians for a year.
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