How much water could have been stored in water year 2018 if the Sites Project existed today?

858,000 acre-feet
= Nearly 280 billion gallons
= Enough to serve 6.3 million Californians
or 2.1 million families, businesses and farms for one year.

1,800,000 acre-feet as of May 3, 2017
= More than 586 billion gallons of water
= Enough to serve 13.3 million Californians or
4.4 million families, businesses and farms for one year.

The Need for Sites

California continues to face severe water challenges: limited supplies and a growing population, compounded by climate change, persistent drought conditions, and increased flow requirements for native fish. Now more than ever, California’s water system needs a more flexible, environmentally friendly solution to capturing and storing water for use when it’s needed most.

Sites is an innovative project and a 21st century solution to California’s water crisis. It is different than any other storage project.

Sites provides previously unachievable flexibility to the state’s water system without impacting sensitive river channels and critical environmental flows that support endangered fish populations.

Sites Works: It achieves California’s co-equal goals of water supply reliability and ecosystem improvement.

Sites has been studied for more than 30 years, and has statewide support. It is designed to give water agencies across the state more flexibility to meet both customer demands and environmental needs, especially in dry and critical years. Increased water supplies to farms and cities across California will have an enormous economic impact.

Sites Project

Adding 500,000 acre-feet to California’s water system – enough to serve 3.7 million people for one year.

Protecting thousands of regional and statewide jobs.

Up to half of Sites’ annual water supplies can be dedicated to environmental flows.

The benefits of Sites would outweigh the costs by a wide margin.

The benefits of the Sites project are expected to exceed costs by $61 million to $72 million annually, by leveraging support and financing of local and statewide water agencies that have already demonstrated significant commitment to the project.

Sites Benefits

Reliable water for California homes, businesses and farms
Environmental flows for native fish
Improved water quality
Contribute to California's renewable energy goals
Groundwater recharge
Flood management
Pacific Flyway habitat for migratory birds and other native species
Recreational opportunities

Where is
Sites?
click for map

The Sites Region

The Sites project would be situated on the west side of the Sacramento Valley, approximately 10 miles west of the rural town of Maxwell, in historic Colusa County. The Sacramento Valley is a unique region, known for it’s farming community, rich agricultural benefits, and natural beauty. The region has been considered ideal for off-stream water storage since the 1980’s, a proposal that is widely supported by local community leaders, residents, as well as state water managers and agencies from the Bay Area to Southern California.

EXPLORE SITES

Water 101

The water that Californians use for drinking, recreating and protecting the environment moves through a system that is arguably the most complex in the world.

Water 101
Introduction
How the water
system works
How the Sites
project will help
Water
resources

Click to enlarge via: norcalwater.org

Not only is there a maze of rivers and aquifers and channels and pipes and dams and tunnels…there is also an intricate system of laws and regulations that local, state and federal agencies deploy to protect and preserve this life-sustaining natural resource.

A complicating factor is that California is by-and-large an arid state. Much of our water comes in the form of snowmelt that originates high in the mountains of the Sierra Nevada and Shasta Cascade regions. But the highest demand for water is in the Bay Area and Southern California. Add climate change into the equation—meaning a shift from a snow-supplied system to a rainfall-capture system—and the careful balance becomes more tenuous.

California has two primary sources of water: surface water from rivers, lakes and streams; and groundwater from underground aquifers. There are others sources, including desalination and recycled water, which provide small amounts of water supply locally.

Groundwater has been managed on a local level historically. Implementation of the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act will bring cohesion and data to the groundwater system to help ensure long-term sustainability.

The state’s primary surface water system is comprised of the State Water Project and the federal Central Valley Project. Surface water is captured and stored in reservoirs and later released to meet water supply, flood control, water quality and environmental needs.

California’s primary source of water comes from the Sierra Nevada Mountains in the form of spring runoff, and is delivered through a complicated system of rivers, canals, and dams that work in conjunction to supply the state’s cities, towns, and farms. Our water system is an engineering feat that has fed a growing and thriving economy. But, climate change has resulted in conditions that our current system is incapable of handling – less snow, shorter, more intense storms, and increased salinity due to sea level rise.

Sites will help the state adapt to climate change by capturing and storing runoff supplies for use in dry and critical years. Between October 2015 and April 2016, over 1,000,000 acre-feet could have been diverted to Sites, filling 60% of its capacity in one year alone.

The project will also help recovering ecosystems by providing up to half of its annual water supplies to environmental flows, which will improve water quality for endangered fish, reduce salinity levels in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta (Delta), and improve Pacific Flyway habitat for migratory birds and other native species.

Sites would relieve stress on the state’s water system, allowing other reservoirs to hold more water later into the summer months. The added flexibility Sites offers would effectively increase the total storage in Northern California by about more than 500,000 acre-feet of water.

By creating a new source of water, and more flexibility in the system, Sites has the potential to help California succeed at implementing 21st century water solutions—to meet human AND environmental needs.

Groundwater sustainability requires effective groundwater recharge. Sites can help store and then move water where and when it’s needed for recharge projects.
Salmon need cold water to survive in the late summer and fall. If water for ag and Delta water quality came from Sites, cold water pools in Shasta and Oroville could be preserved.
If Sites had been in place in 2016, about 500,000 acre-feet could have been captured and stored—a much-needed boost to overall state water supplies in the middle of our historic drought.
Climate change is creating a new normal: less snow-pack and flashier rainfall. Sites is ideally located to maximize the capture and storage of rain.

Support For Sites

List of Supporters

Letters, Resolutions & Cards

WHAT THEY ARE SAYING ABOUT SITES

"But if done right, something like the proposed Sites Reservoir in Colusa County – which would be nearly twice the size of Folsom Lake and has bipartisan backing – could be a valuable place to park a downpour."

SACRAMENTO BEE
Editorial Board
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"[Sites] would deliver benefits statewide by increasing water supply and, with proper management, providing versatility in water delivery for farms, cities and much-needed groundwater recharge. One of the most promising aspects of Sites is that a bloc of water would be allocated to the environment."

SACRAMENTO BEE
Editorial Board
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"This bi-partisan effort promoting progressive water management is a step forward for California. The dry years in California have shown the importance of surface storage for all beneficial purposes--water needed for cities and rural communities, farms, fish, birds and recreation. An off-stream regulating reservoir on the west-side of the Sacramento Valley (Sites) is critical for all these beneficial purposes in the Sacramento Valley, as well as providing statewide water system operational improvements."

David Guy
President, Northern California Water Association
"Building Sites Reservoir is vital the Sacramento Valley. We need additional surface water storage to help all aspects of our region for future generations, including four annual salmon runs, habitat for millions of birds that depend on area rice fields, our small towns and family farms."

Tim Johnson
President & CEO, California Rice Commission
"Sites is a critical project for both the local and statewide economy. A project of this magnitude will help stabilize water supplies and provide much needed economic development in the North State region while also creating thousands of jobs and apprenticeship opportunities for local young men and women."

Robbie Hunter
President, State Building and Construction Trades Council of California
"Sites is an incredibly important project for the State of California that meets many of the public benefits required by the Water Bond."

Assemblyman Gallagher
"The fact that Sites would not dam a river makes it more palatable to many than proposals to raise Shasta Dam on the upper Sacramento River and construct a new dam and reservoir on the San Joaquin River just upstream of the existing Friant Dam and Millerton Lake near Fresno."

Los Angeles Times
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"Sites Reservoir offers a remarkable opportunity to reoperate California's longest and largest river, the Sacramento, to provide multiple benefits for fish, farms and cities in an innovative manner. By partnering with the Sites Project Authority in the development of the Reservoir, the state would acquire water storage capacity and have management control over the resulting releases to ensure environmental benefits are achieved."

Senator Feinstein
"Sites Reservoir is one of the most useful, cost-effective water infrastructure projects California could build. It is an ideal project that can provide water for agriculture, urban uses and the environment. The support for the Sites Project from a majority of the California Congressional delegation speaks to the statewide benefits of the project."

Congressman Garamendi
"North and South, rural and urban, Republican and Democrat, California's leaders agree on one thing: our state needs to invest in Sites Reservoir to meet the water supply challenges of today and the future. Sites provides more water per dollar invested than any other proposed project in the state, enough to supply millions of Californians for an entire year, while also creating environmental benefits and allowing smart recapture and reuse of water released from other reservoirs. Investing in Sites will fulfill the will of the 67% of Californians who supported Proposition 1 funding for water storage infrastructure, and I hope the California Water Commission recognizes the project's diverse benefits."

Congressman LaMalfa
"As water and environmental managers have been forced to operate under a constant regulatory threat, Sites Reservoir will provide a critical tool for them to solve California's toughest water problems collaboratively and productively."

Senator Nielsen
"Building Sites Reservoir is an imperative part of the solution to help California meet our water supply challenges of today and the future. The operational flexibility provided by the unique project offers reliable long-term assistance to California's complex water system."

Assemblyman Dahle
"But the first part is building Sites so there's water available to flush out the delta and augment supplies when water is short. Give the water system some flexibility. Look at all that water flowing down the river and get it [Sites] done."

Chico Enterprise-Record
Editorial Board
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"But the need for it [Sites] has only become more urgent as a growing population puts more pressure on perennial water shortages."

Redding Record Searchlight
Editorial Board
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"An innovative, off-stream water storage proposal northeast of Sacramento should be one of the top priorities for the state's spending of Proposition 1 water-bond money."

Los Angeles Daily News
Editorial Board
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"Sites, by comparison, is in the right spot to provide water to help the delta when it's needed. It's also in the right spot to allow more cold water to be saved in Shasta Lake to help endangered and threatened fish populations in the Sacramento River."

East Bay Times
Editorial Board
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