California Water News Daily Your Source For Water News in California
Repairs to a portion of the California Aqueduct near Gustine in Merced County have been delayed due to a rupture in a water-filled cofferdam that was used to divert water for construction activities.
The Department of Water Resources, (DWR) will be installing rock-filled cofferdams instead. Once the new cofferdams are in place, the site will be dewatered to resume construction.
Repairs were expected to be complete by the end of the May, but now DWR expects to finish in late June.
As part of the repair, DWR is replacing the concrete liner of the aqueduct at mile 62 and permanently stabilizing the embankment.
A nearby portion of the aqueduct at mile 65 was also identified by DWR staff that it could benefit from similar repairs. So construction on both sites will be completed at the same time.
The 444-mile-long California Aqueduct is the primary water conveyance structure for the State Water Project (SWP), which draws water from the Sierra Nevada and transports it to approximately 27 million Californians and about 750,000 acres of farmland. Built from 1963 to 1973, the aqueduct begins at the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta and ends in Southern California, with additional canals and pipes that supply SWP water to the Bay Area and coastal communities. In 2017, the SWP transported more than 3.7 million acre feet of water throughout the state.
There are no expected impacts to water deliveries.
