California Water News Daily Your Source For Water News in California
The Department of the Interior has awarded a $7 million grant to the Imperial Irrigation District (IID) for their Upstream Operational Reservoir Project. This latest grant is in addition to a $9.5 million grant previously awarded to the district for a total of $16.5 million in federal funding for the reservoir project.
The new reservoir would have a 2,100 acre-feet capacity, which is twice as large as the district’s off-line storage system and four times larger than the biggest in-Valley reservoir with a goal of accommodating short water orders downstream in the eastern Imperial Valley, managing up to 365,000-acre feet of water annually and conserving up to 15,000 acre-feet of water per year.
“We all have been working very hard for a long time to maximize water management efficiency in the Imperial Valley and this will help us do that on a large scale,” said IID Board President Alex Cardenas, who congratulated the district’s Water Department for their grant writing skill and cooperation with federal officials. “These funds will help us get one step closer to getting this very important project completed,” he added.
IID has been working on the Upstream Operational Reservoir Project for about eight years and they say a number of tasks remain to be completed, including design, engineering, site and inlet structure locations, etc.
Once completed, the project would be IID’s 12th reservoir to be located upstream in the southeastern region of the Imperial Valley near the All-American and East Highline Canals. It’s proposed basin area would cover up to 440 acres.
