On Tuesday May 21, 2024, the Department of the Interior announced $81 million from President Biden’s Investing in America agenda for water conservation and drought resilience south of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta in California’s San Joaquin Valley.
For several decades, the Central Valley Project has served the communities and economies of central California. The project, extending 400 miles, is a complex, multi-purpose network of dams, reservoirs, canals, hydroelectric powerplants and other facilities, which reduces flood risk for the Central Valley and supplies domestic and industrial water supplies across the region. The project supports about 2.5 million people a year, providing supplies to 250 contractors in 29 of California’s 58 counties.
Central Valley Project water deliveries south of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta are dependent on Reclamation’s ability to pump water from the Delta, San Luis Reservoir water storage, and conveyance through Central Valley Project canals. Through the new drought plan, Central Valley Project South-of-Delta contractors will share a portion of their wet water year supplies for use in driest years. This will help provide critical water supplies to refuges and cities, save permanent crops from being fallowed in drought years, and keep water in the San Joaquin River in the worst of drought years.
The plan provides major benefits both to farmers and to salmon in the San Joaquin, California’s second longest river. The river restoration program has junior water rights and is vulnerable to severe water cutbacks in the driest of years. The creation of a “drought pool” of additional water supplies in these driest of years will help ensure that there is water for the salmon when they most need it.
To realize the benefits of the drought plan, the contractors, in collaboration with Reclamation, have identified a number of critical infrastructure projects that are key to successful implementation. The $81 million investment from the Inflation Reduction Act announced Tuesday will help fund a majority of the projects. The funding will also help to establish additional aquifer storage, recharge and recovery wells, re-operations of existing surface storage, and conveyance capacity expansion.