“Republic of Thirst” is a three-part series made possible by a generous fellowship from the Robert Novak Foundation. Part I of examined the debate over how California’s scarce water resources should be allocated. Part III will examine whether those resources can
President Donald Trump is being credited for the passage of a new provision through the U.S. House of Representatives on Thursday that will provide funding to help California to build its first water storage infrastructure in 40 years.
The California Water Commission was awarded $816 million of Proposition 1 money to begin building the $5.2 billion Sites Reservoir — the state’s first big reservoir since the 1970s. The $7.5 billion Proposition 1: Water Quality, Supply, and Infrastructure Improvement
California Republican state legislators showed up to the California Water Commission (CWC) this week to demand that $2.7 billion of Proposition 1 Water Bonds be spent to build new reservoirs.
The California Water Commission appears to have killed all 12 of the above-ground storage reservoirs proposed under the voter-approved, $7.5 billion Proposition 1 water bond of 2014 by estimating they will all cost more than their benefits.
Writing for the Los Angeles Times, reporter Thomas Curwen called California’s historic, four-year-long drought “serious, but hardly a disaster.”
