Wouldn’t be a great PR stunt to have the POTUS go to Cali, stand in front of the damaged Oroville Dam to push his infrastructure deal? Then again, no one was complaining that he didn’t hop abroad AF1 and travel to survey the problem either since I thought it was necessary for a POTUS to run to every event to calm the masses – PB/TK
Just weeks after Oroville Dam crisis, damage found in another key California reservoir –
California water officials, still struggling with fixes at Oroville Dam, will have to temporarily shut down the pumping station that delivers water to much of Southern California and Silicon Valley after discovering damage at another key state reservoir.
The state Department of Water Resources confirmed Tuesday that operators discovered damage to the intake structure at the Clifton Court Forebay, a nearly two-mile-wide reservoir that stores water for the State Water Project pumping plant in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta near Tracy. Repairs will begin Wednesday. It’s not clear how long they will last.
However, state officials said State Water Project customers won’t lose any water deliveries.
“This is not an emergency of any kind,” said Doug Carlson, a spokesman for the Department of Water Resources. “The water is going to continue to flow to contractors.”
Clifton Court is a crucial piece of the State Water Project’s plumbing. Water stored in the forebay is piped to the nearby pumping station, where it’s delivered to 19 million residents of Southern California, portions of Silicon Valley and about 750,000 acres of farmland in the Central Valley. A third of Southern California’s drinking water typically flows from the Delta pumps.
Ted Page, board president of the Kern County Water Agency, one of the chief agricultural customers of the SWP, said he was told the state will deliver water from the San Luis Reservoir in Merced County while repairs are being made at Clifton Court. Page said he’s been told the shipments from San Luis should be enough to meet customer demands while repairs are underway.
San Luis Reservoir, jointly owned by the SWP and the federal government’s Central Valley Project, is 99 percent full with a little more than 2 million acre-feet in storage. An acre-foot is 326,000 gallons.
