California Water News Daily Your Source For Water News in California
The Contra Costa Water District, in partnership with the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, is looking to further expand the Los Vaqueros Reservoir in Contra Costa County. The expansion would increase the reservoir’s current capacity of 160,000 acre-feet to 275,000 acre-feet. The expansion is said to have been a part of the project’s long-term plans but was recently pushed further because of the severe drought in California.
“It’s been going on for a long time, it’s just been recent that we’ve been directed by our leadership to move forward with finishing the feasibility study,” the Bureau of Reclamation’s manager for the project, Brook Miller-Levy, told CBS San Francisco.
The bureau completed the environmental impact study but the feasibility study was never finished. Miller-Levy attributes that partly due to the lack of state funding. The bureau requires half of the cost to be shared by a non-federal entity.
In 2012, the water district expanded the reservoir by 600,000 acre-feet. That expansion was used to supply water to current and future customers, in addition to potential partner agencies. The proposed expansion could include partners across the state as the district looks into ways of storing and transferring water to other agencies.
“There’s definitely interest in seeing that facility expanded to provide larger regional benefits and we’re working with other local, regional, state and federal agencies in order to explore those options,” Contra Costa Water District spokeswoman Jennifer Allen told CBS San Francisco.
Although the water district has yet to identify any potential partners, should the project move forward, a number of sign offs must take place, including from the Secretary of the Interior and the Office of Management and Budget, before it goes to Congress to be voted on before construction begins.
At the earliest, the project will be completed by the end of 2016.
