Water Storage Funding: Fooled Again for the Umpteenth Time

Location of the Sites Reservoir, proposed in the 1980's

We've posted frequently (for example here, here, and here) on California's failure to add more water storage to get it through the drought years. The SF Chronicle notes that it's not the fault of the voters, who approved a $7.5 billion bond measure in 2014:

Nearly 10 years later, none of the major storage projects, which include new and expanded reservoirs, has gotten off the ground.

As the state experiences a historic bout of rain and snow this winter, amid another severe water shortage, critics are lamenting the missed opportunity to capture more of the extraordinary runoff that has been swelling rivers, flooding towns and pouring into the sea.

The seven dedicated storage projects funded by voter-approved Proposition 1 remain in various stages of planning. Many are big ventures, including the proposed Sites Reservoir in the Sacramento Valley that would be California’s eighth-largest reservoir. Such efforts require years of design, permitting and fundraising and are not easy to build. Still, some say progress has been too slow given the dire need for water.

The WSJ assigns blame for the delay and waste of the allotted funds:

State voters have approved eight water bonds since 2000 that authorize some $27 billion in funding for various water projects, but little of the money has gone to storage or flood control. That’s because politicians buy off green support for water bonds by promising to spend a large share of their proceeds on ecosystem restoration.

Only $2.7 billion of a $7.5 billion water bond that voters approved in 2014 was allocated for storage. None of the seven storage projects selected by the state for funding has begun construction. Blame in part a government permitting morass. Most aren’t expected to be completed until the end of this decade, assuming they aren’t marooned by lawsuits.

Voters support water bond measures because they think the money will be spent on drought preparation. But it never is. Liberals use droughts and floods to campaign for water bonds that end up funding pet environmental causes. Rinse and repeat. Mr. Newsom last week floated another bond measure for water projects and wildfire mitigation

Your humble blogger confesses that water storage proposals are among the few bond measures that he has voted for in the past three decades.

Even knowing that much of the monies would be wasted, misdirected, and even stolen, I hoped that some projects would be completed by now.

But I was mistaken in thinking that California government still retained a minuscule amount of competence and honesty. Fooled again, shame on me.