Taking a "critical step" toward becoming a regional water source, Bay Area jurisdictions overseeing the future expansion of the Los Vaqueros Reservoir filed the necessary agreements to form a joint powers authority (JPA) earlier this month.
Project leaders said in a statement that "transforming a local reservoir into a regional facility requires partnerships," and creating a JPA is "a critical step in forming this partnership."
Partnering agencies including Zone 7 Water Agency, East Bay Municipal Utility District and the Santa Clara Valley Water District will manage the project using organizational framework for design, construction, operation, maintenance and funding, as outlined by the JPA.
Built in 1998, the off-stream reservoir's original capacity was 100,000 acre-feet until the first phase of expansion to hold 160,000 acre-feet of water was completed almost 10 years ago.
The ultimate goal is to expand the Los Vaqueros Reservoir to a new capacity of 275,000 acre-feet, as well as add new conveyance facilities that "will provide environmental, water supply reliability, operational flexibility, water quality and recreational benefits."
Zone 7 Board President Angela Ramirez Holmes said, "In addition to local storage, this regional partnership also has the benefit of emergency conveyance which is critical for when there are pumping restrictions in the Delta preventing Zone 7 from accessing State Water Project water. This alternative conveyance will increase the Tri-Valley water system's reliability."
John Coleman, director of Ward 2 for the East Bay Municipal Utility District and a Los Vaqueros JPA board member, called the future expansion "not only important for EBMUD, but for the Bay Area and the region as a whole."
"Along with efforts such as water conservation, water recycling, and supplemental supplies, EBMUD will continue to support mutually-beneficial regional reliability efforts to prepare for an uncertain future," Coleman said.
The partnership extends to Silicon Valley, where Valley Water Board Chair Tony Estremera said the agency is "proactively exploring ways to secure enough water to help all our communities in Santa Clara County weather droughts," and "looks forward to working with our JPA partners on this important project that could improve the reliability of our region's water supply."
The JPA's first public meeting will take place next month, when members "will bring perspectives from the agency or agencies they represent and work collaboratively to meet the needs of all agencies involved."
After securing the necessary permits, approvals and agreements, construction on the expansion project is scheduled to begin in winter 2023. A combination of funds including $470 million from Proposition 1 as well as federal and local partners will cover the project costs.
To learn more about the JPA, visit www.losvaquerosjpa.com.
Comments
Registered user
Livermore
on Oct 22, 2021 at 6:43 am
Registered user
on Oct 22, 2021 at 6:43 am
Household Water Depends on Excess Power
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It seems to me there will be a bifurcation of battery applications between critical and subcritical.
The critical applications will tend towards national defense, public health, and environmental. Subcritical will tend to everything else.
The bifurcation will assign to critical, the most reliable energy sources and assign to subcritical, everything else.
Which side of the bifurcation does abundant dependable year-round clean water production in densely urbanized areas land on? Battery/Solar primary source or Other Energies as primary source?
Intuitively the industries effected will reply, this is not a “what comes first, the chicken or the egg” discussion. I sense our prime national interests will jell around “reliability and availability.” These seem like imperatives if we seek preservation of a constitutional republic, freedom, and abundance.
Non-weapons grade Thorium happens to be abundant in nearly every country. It has to be mined, but its half life is only 300 years and it can also be reprocessed and reused in the same walk-away safe, Molten Salt small modular reactors (SMR’s)
Using gravity and nature as the fail safe, when the big earthquake breaks everything we avoid Fukushima events, as salt cools below 500 degrees centigrade, it solidifies in place, thus shutting down the SMR-reactor. Sandia Labs reported in its PR Video that it’s building a thorium reactor now. So far no further video details have been released.
These SMR reactors are scalable from 1.5 kw to 1-billion megawatts on a 5 to 100 acre sites. So you can produce SMR energy on 100 acres that takes 100,000 acres of industrial solar panels and/or windmills and battery vaults.
Once we reach 24/7/365 disbursed SMR reliability, we can indulge ourselves in beautifying earth taking her back to nature. We then have excess reliable energy to purify and recycle water systems in multiple applications.
Registered user
Livermore
on Oct 24, 2021 at 8:07 am
Registered user
on Oct 24, 2021 at 8:07 am
ATMOSHPHERIC SCIENCE TURNED ON ITS HEAD PART I OF 2
Clean up the narrative to match the science and weather. In one of the most important contributions the Atmospheric Science Department of LLNL could make, i.e., the distinction: Are we in global warming or global cooling?
Unfortunately their science narrative is out of sync with what we are experiencing.
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This new emerging group of Atmospheric Scientists is composed of a highly respected subgroup of thought leaders in Atmospheric Science. Suddenly the old generation is precipitating downwards out of vogue and leaving a new group of highly respected thought leaders as beacons of the emerging reality. The reality of our weather is beginning to match with those atmospheric scientific papers that conclude we are going into a steeper earth cooling as ocean currents are slowed at the poles due to fresh water melting and then refreezing. What was heresy before that would get your career sidetracked, is becoming the new science.
Fresh water floats on Salt water forming natural density layers that are slow to remix into just salt water. The freezing temperature of fresh water is higher than salt water, meaning it will freeze sooner. After the quick melting of ice at the north pole we are being followed with even greater matter of environmental concern that refreezing of the surface floating fresh water is triggering a deeper ice age as a greater mass of fresh water ice returns over larger artic ocean surface area than before, and stops and/or slows ocean currents. Once the ocean currents are disrupted, slowed, or even stopped, the ice age cycle dramatically deepens through a cascading chain reaction of diminished water flow momentum. And with it, out go the old atmospheric science dogmas. LLNL atmospheric scientists have been under its past leadership, grouped under the old atmospheric scientist dogmas.... see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil.... and that's no longer working.
Registered user
Pleasanton Meadows
on Oct 24, 2021 at 9:52 am
Registered user
on Oct 24, 2021 at 9:52 am
The chicken was first.
Evolution created the egg!