It never rains in Southern California?

[Journeyman]

3. Dams and Reservoirs are amongf our least viable options . . .

Capitol Journal: California should stop thinking about more dams. The state is brimming with them


https://www.latimes.com/politics/la-pol-sac-skelton-water-storage-california-20190304-story.html

California is already dammed to the brim. Every river worth damming has been. And some that weren’t worth it were dammed anyway.

Some old proposed dam locations were found to be earthquake-risky. Quake faults tend to frustrate reservoir planning in this state.

The fact is, however, there are nearly 1,500 dams in California. At least 1,000 are major, and 55 can hold 100,000 acre-feet or more of water. There are 36 reservoirs that can contain at least 200,000 acre-feet. Eleven are in the 1-million-plus category.

(snip)

We’ve about used all the good dam sites.

And dams have become almost unaffordable.

Moreover, one dirty secret about dams — a very major flaw — is that they tend to silt up, gradually reducing a reservoir’s capacity.

A 2009 UC Berkeley report estimated that about 1.8 million acre-feet of storage space had been lost to silt. It found that nearly 190 reservoirs had lost more than 50% of their original capacity.

(snip)

Former state Sen. Fran Pavley (D-Agoura Hills) told me two years ago that she tried several times to pass legislation appropriating money for silt cleanup. She also sponsored a bill requiring a state study. But the measures were killed.

“I knew full well taking out silt would be quicker and less expensive than building a new storage reservoir,” she said. “But the priority was to build more dams.”