About the Water Storage and Conveyance Programs
The Central Valley Project
Reclamation operates the Central Valley Project (CVP), one of the largest and most complex water storage and conveyance systems in the world. The CVP, together with the State Water Project (SWP), operated by the California Department of Water Resources (DWR), stores, moves and delivers water for agricultural, urban and environmental uses throughout California.
The CVP is comprised of 20 dams and reservoirs (able to store 9 million acre-feet* of water); 11 power plants; 500 miles of canals, conduits, tunnels and aqueducts; three fish hatcheries; and associated facilities including pumping plants and power lines and stretches from Shasta Dam in the northern reaches of the Sacramento Valley to Friant Dam in the southern San Joaquin Valley.
Water is stored in large reservoirs principally in the northern Sacramento Valley region (e.g., Shasta and Folsom dams), moved to the San Francisco Bay-Delta (primarily through the Sacramento River), and then pumped from the Delta into the Delta-Mendota Canal for delivery to the San Joaquin Valley.
Water Storage
California’s water management system depends on surface storage not only for water supply, but flood control, hydropower generation and recreation. Existing surface storage is used to maintain water quality in the Delta and is operated in conjunction with groundwater storage (aquifers) to provide better water supply reliability. Surface and groundwater systems used together is a process called conjunctive** use. As California’s population grows and the effects of climate change continue, new storage facilities must be built.
The Water Storage Program’s primary goal is to develop storage systems for the CVP. All of the storage investigations currently under consideration by Reclamation are related to surface storage and include expansion of existing facilities or development of new facilities. Since the late 1990s, state and federal agencies have performed detailed studies that have focused on four promising surface storage projects. This information has been published in a series of documents that can be found on Reclamation and DWR project Web sites.
- North of the Delta Off-stream Storage (NODOS)
- Los Vaqueros Reservoir Expansion
- Shasta Lake Water Resources Investigation
- Upper San Joaquin River Basin Storage Investigation
Water Conveyance
The Conveyance Program is responsible for delivering the stored water from source to destination. Conveyance systems can be manmade (canals and aqueducts) or utilize existing natural features (rivers). The Conveyance Program is currently looking at four projects that would either enhance or develop both manmade and natural systems.
- South Delta Improvements Project – Stage 1
- Delta-Mendota Canal/California Aqueduct Intertie Project
- Delta-Mendota Canal Recirculation Project
- San Luis Low Point Improvement Project
* An acre-foot of water is enough water to cover an acre of land one foot deep and supply approximately two families with water for a year
**Surface and groundwater systems used together
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Last edited on: July 21, 2008
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