California State Water Project

Sam, if the Sites Project is turned over to the California Department of Water Resources, then it will get done.

That's who put in the State Water Project and handled the contractors, all the subs and everything.

Granted, it is run by more liberal people these days because the director does not often come from the department, but it is installed by the governor.

I used to write contracts for the Department of Water Resources, and the State Water Project is pretty much or was paid for by the state contractors.

So...

If the money comes from the state to the Department of Water Resources and the state contractors, it will get built.

So San Jose Water Company is number one, and then San Jose, the municipal system, is number five.

What we've seen is that these two systems both rely about half of their water from valley water, which gets its water from the State Water Project.

So the costs are often driven by the cost of importing water and purchasing water that's really making their costs so high in San Jose.

It's interesting because San Jose is kind of split.

In fact, it's one of the most affordable systems in the state.

And that's because all of its water is from groundwater supplies, groundwater wells across its service area.

So it shows to me that the cost of purchasing water from the State Water Project is really driving a lot of the high costs in the San Jose area and the Bay Area in particular.

So it's very interesting.

But when it comes to water here in the valley, I mean, it's one of the most interesting.

amazing systems with the State Water Project and the Central Valley Water Project.

And what we can do is just build upon existing infrastructure, invest in it.

And when the state pulls out a bond in 2014 that the people allow, use that money to actually build dams.

If you think about where the state water aqueducts originate, most of them originate in the Sacramento Delta.

And so State Water Project Water, a lot of it comes from the Delta water.

So is that really to help the farmers? Is that why we have that water system there that filters down?

It is for farming, but it's also a lot of it goes to L.A., which is, of course, a desert.

water is critical to ensure long-term water reliability to IUA's 950,000 people spanning over 242 square miles in Western San Bernardino County that IUA serves.

So IUA service area currently depend on imported supplies from the State Water Project for roughly 30% of its water portfolio.

making it vulnerable to drought, regulatory constraints, and also statewide supply limitations.

So maintaining the health of the Chino Basin and replenishing local aquifers are therefore essential to our regional sustainability.

It's pumped in.

State water project is pumped in, and there's a little wedge up there called recycling.

Now, the goal is to more than double the amount of water that we're recycling in the next 10 years.

In other words, uh, that wedge is gonna get bigger.

This is the energy content, and you can forget about the units here, but, um, just look at the height of that bar.

That's the current water supply for, um, uh, Santa Clara Valley.

This much of it, this big green part, that's the pumping of the water to the system from the, uh, State Water Project, uh, and the like.

If we go to recycled water, we can-- we're, we're not paying for that big import fee, uh, that e-energy fee, I guess.

I mean, we built the Golden Gate Bridge in four years, you know, nearly a century ago.

We built the State Water Project and the suburbs of Southern California and the magnificent UC campuses all across the state.

I mean, there was a time when we really knew how to build things quickly and effectively.

And unfortunately, as, you know, Ezra Klein has written and Derek Thompson in their book Abundance, we just got bogged down in process around these things.

And they keep getting bigger.

And you see more and more almonds taken out and farmland taken out because there's not enough water, because they've rewritten the contracts for the California Water Project and the Central Valley Project.

And then when you get on I-5, you go over Pacheco, you get on 152, you go over Pach- and you see these massive, uh, wind turbines.

And you'll see a thing, this is so funny.

Let's do it

... because I- I think, you know, the State Water Project, you know, I don't know if folks know about State Water Project, but basically, Southern California is a desert, right? We don't have a lot of, like, local source of water.

So when Southern California was booming in population and activity, um, it needed a lot of water.

And, um, and back in the '60s, you know, great civil engineers, they thought of a plan to transport all the water from Northern California [laughs] all the way down to Southern California.

And that's the only reason why Southern California is what it is right now-

Mm-hmm

... because of the State Water Project.

And they did all this back in the '60s.