RESTORATION
Water Storage
California maintains an elaborate storage and conveyance system to deal with water scarcity. The two largest systems—the federal Central Valley Project (CVP) and the State Water Project (SWP)—store water in the Central Valley watershed and route it to farms and cities throughout the state.
The CVP and SWP are among the most impressive water storage and conveyance systems on earth. They supply water to more than 25 million people and millions of acres of the most productive farms in the nation. They also provide hydropower, recreation, flood control, water for wildlife refuges, and regulate flows to reduce harm to the state’s native species, including multiple runs of salmon and steelhead.
California should be proud of its water management system. Although far from perfect, the state has leveraged its water resources to support a wide range of beneficial uses and economic development.
But what’s past is not prologue. Decision makers face major questions and challenges ahead. The climate is changing, infrastructure is aging, and competing interests for water continue to grow.
Shasta Dam and the Central Valley Project (CVP)
Shasta Dam, owned and operated by the federal Bureau of Reclamation (BOR), impounds California’s largest and arguably most important surface reservoir. Completed in 1945, the CVP’s flagship 602-foot concrete arch-gravity structure stores over 4.5 million acre-feet, generates up to 600 mega-watts of power, and regulates the flow of the Sacramento River in concert with downstream dams, pumps, and canals throughout the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. Water from Shasta Reservoir flows down the Sacramento River into the Delta, gets pumped into a series of canals heading south, and is then delivered to irrigation districts and water associations from Stockton to Bakersfield.
At first glance, Shasta Dam seems like an obvious place to invest resources to shore up California’s water storage to improve supply reliability. Naturally, the concept captures the attention of politicians and lobbyists looking to deliver on promises of water security and it has the attraction of looking like bold action to tackle a big problem. Consequently, with strong support from southern irrigation districts, the BOR issued its first Draft Feasibility Report and Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) in 2013 for raising Shasta Dam by 18.5 feet.