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By Alia Shoaib
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California has approved a permit for a nearly $7 billion reservoir that would be the state's largest to be built in nearly 50 years.
The Sites Reservoir, a controversial project decades in the making, received approval for a water right permit in a unanimous vote by the State Water Resources Control Board on Wednesday.
The reservoir will be built near the community of Maxwell, about 70 miles northwest of Sacramento, and will flood around 15,000 acres of land. It is designed to collect water pumped from the Sacramento River during wet periods, which can then be stored and released when supplies are lower.
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The project will involve two nearly 300-feet-tall dams, alongside nine smaller dams, creating a reservoir capable of holding up to 1.5 million acre-feet of water. In comparison, the two largest Californian reservoirs, Lake Shasta and Lake Oroville, have capacities of 4.55 million acre-feet and 3.54 million acre-feet, respectively.
"We’re living with more extreme droughts and floods, and a growing need to store water during wet periods. Sites is built for exactly that," E. Joaquin Esquivel, the board’s chair, said, according to the Los Angeles Times.
Democratic California Governor Gavin Newsom said the decision showed "California can get big infrastructure projects moving again." He added that "now it’s time to get shovels in the ground," per the paper.
California's Water Supply Challenges
California experiences swings between drought and flooding, which are being made increasingly unpredictable due to climate change.
The state already has an extensive network of dams, reservoirs and canals designed to store water and transport it from the wetter north to the south, but officials say much of that infrastructure was not designed for today's climate.
"Our water systems that were really once on the vanguard and the envy of the world are not built for the climate we have," Natural Resources Secretary Wade Crowfoot said, according to the LA Times. "And it demands something different from what we’ve done in the past."
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However, critics say that the project will only marginally increase California’s overall water supply while potentially damaging natural ecosystems and increasing greenhouse gas emissions.
"The Sites Reservoir project makes no sense. It costs billions, delivers a trickle of new water, and threatens the health of the Sacramento River and San Francisco Bay-Delta," said Keiko Mertz, policy director of the environmental group Friends of the River, per the LA Times.
Environmental scientist Christina Swanson told the board that there was not enough water available to fill the reservoir, describing the project as "amazingly ill-conceived."
And an analysis commissioned by environmental groups Friends of the River and Tell The Dam Truth, which have opposed the project, estimated that Sites could produce around 362,000 metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions annually. This is equivalent to the emissions of more than 80,000 gasoline-powered cars.
Native American communities such as the Cachil Dehe Band of Wintun Indians and the Kletsel Dehe Wintun Nation have also expressed concern about the project flooding areas of cultural and ancestral significance.
The five-member state water board said it had considered the objections raised during the review process and was satisfied that sufficient environmental safeguards were in place, the LA Times reported.
The project is projected to cost between $6.2 billion and $6.8 billion, with state and federal funding covering about a third of construction costs and the remainder expected to come from participating water agencies.
Work on the reservoir is expected to get underway in 2027, with the project scheduled to be completed by 2034.
Contact Newsweek editors on this story: Matthew Robinson and James Debens
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