Posted on 12/15/2021 8:49:08 PM PST by blueplum
SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — Amid a severe drought, California regulators on Wednesday advanced what could be the state’s first major new water storage project in years despite warnings it would hasten the extinction of an endangered salmon species while disrupting the cultural traditions of some native tribes.
The plan is to build a new lake in Northern California that, when full, could hold enough water to supply 3 million households for one year. Supporters need about $4 billion to build it. Wednesday’s vote by the California Water Commission means the lake — named Sites Reservoir — is eligible for about $800 million in taxpayer money, or about 20% of the project’s price tag.
The vote is a major milestone for the reservoir, one of seven water storage projects now eligible to receive public money from a 2014 voter-approved bond....
(Excerpt) Read more at apnews.com ...
The grand plan is feed the new lake via 14 miles of underground pipe from a pump station on the Sacramento River. In general, the reservoir will be located somewhere between Yuba City and Clear Lake.
here's a short video that explains why the 'real' central valley (Fresno south) needs a reservoir more than wine country does:
Whatever they build, the influx of illegals in recent years have already exceeded the additional capacity.
Nice that a reservoir is being built.
Now that we have six feet of new snow in the sierras, and even more on Shasta and Lassen, maybe this time they wont waste it like they did the big snowpack in 2019?
Right. Sure they wont.
The site plan says it will be about 10 miles west of Maxwell, CA.
The plan is to store excess "storm water" flows from the Sacramento river. Ok, sounds reasonable...
The Sacramento river is 10 miles east of Maxwell.
Are they really going to pump large volumes of water uphill? How is that "green" and eco-friendly? It will also be wildly inefficient. To capture excess storm water flows they'll need really large capacity pumping systems, that only operate periodically. This is the opposite of efficiency. But I'm sure some engineering company charged them tens of millions of dollars for a "study" that said sure, this is a wonderful idea, you should do it immediately.
Regulators? Regulators advanced the plan. Never happen. Democrats want only thing: For America to crash and burn.
$4 billion? They could finance that with the “leakage” from the ridiculous and utterly useless choo-choo project.
Given its California, this project appears to be a lawyers wet dream....
If California had spent the billions it has wasted on the bullet train that comes from and goes to nowhere on Israeli-style desalination plants up and down it’s coast, right now they would not have any water shortage and they would be able to sell the excess water to surrounding land locked states like AZ and NV.
Yes, you are correct at solving the technical problem, but, no, California doesn’t need more water. It needs fewer Democrats. Water drives growth.
$2.7 billion bond fund to build water reservoirs sits idle in California
Tori Richards August 16, 2021
It’s been seven years since drought-wracked California raked in $2.7 billion in bond funds that promised construction of reservoirs to capture excess water runoff during winters.
The money is sitting in a bank account without a single shovel of dirt overturned to begin construction of eight above-ground water holding facilities. Meanwhile, governors and local politicians over the years have called for urban water cutbacks and even rationing for farmers who have watched crops wither and die due to decreased water supply.
All of this is due to the state’s bureaucratic controls that cause major construction projects to take decades to complete. This dichotomy is starkly apparent at the nation’s tallest dam, Oroville, which is at its lowest level ever, with only one-third of its water supply remaining.
Nothing gets built here until there’s a crisis.
Back in 2001, there had been no new power plants built for at least a generation. But the Enron Electricity Power Crisis caused so much political heat on Gray Davis that it was one of the major reasons he was recalled. He fast-tracked a dozen power stations in the state, when prior to that none had been built for a couple of decades due to interference from NIMBY democrats.
Now we’re seeing water projects because about 10 million people have moved to California over the last 3 major droughts when NO other water projects were built.
Hmm. Will they actually let it reserve despite the Delta Smelt of some other critter? Going off memory I think the last Cali Reservoir was about 2020 near San Diego. Cali dams would stay full if not for their worship of a fish you can buy for $12 a pound at Vons.
Only California, with all those miles of coastline, could have a drought.
That is counter productive to forcing all the water conversation crap down our throats.
California is run by Eco Fascists. Don’t forget that
Forget it, Jake, it’s Chinatown.
Still the best explanation.
They don’t have the power to do desalinization. They can barely keep the lights on.
Projects now eligible to receive public money from a 2014 voter-approved bond.
How cute now people on the multi billion dollar bullet train will have something else to look at.
IF most of the pumping uphill is done during periods of low demand, the idea might make sense. The potential energy (well, most of it) can be extracted on the way back down.
Basically, you’ve got a giant battery.
Ameren, in Missouri, does this, albeit on a smaller scale. It works well enough that after a spectacular catastrophic failure of their upper reservoir at Taum Sauk Mountain, they rebuilt the upper reservoir.
https://www.ameren.com/missouri/company/environment-and-sustainability/hydroelectric/taum-sauk
In the CA case, they can also SELL the water itself after it comes down, also in periods of high demand. If the pumps in reverse can run as reasonably efficient generators(?), and if the river stays high enough to pump from, oh, maybe 60 days a year, on average, the whole thing might not be as cockeyed as it 1st seems.
They should have excess power capacity during periods of low demand. But I don’t know if that’s enough.
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