California's New $4BN Mega Reservoir

What do you think, should the new mega reservoir be built? 🌊

As a Dutch person, it seems to me that California might be better served with thousands of small local projects, that let the land soak up the water when it rains. A huge basin is great, but it doesn't solve the underlying issue. Create places where the water stays in the soil, in stead of evaporating. In the Netherlands, we have tiny little streams everywhere, that keep the ground moist so trees and bushes will grow, their roots hold even more water, etc. In California, there seems to be a lot of water evaporating, due to the dry conditions. If you protect the soil, water doesn't evaporate so quickly. Obviously, it's not the intention to turn California into a second Netherlands, lol! But maybe solving the problem at it's core in stead of the symptoms might be a better course of action.

I live in northern California. Marysville area. The sites reservoir is a bad idea. A better idea is restoration of Tulare lake. They keep it drained to use it as farm Land's. The lake was the largest freshwater lake west of the Mississippi and considered the Great lake of the West. They need to restore the lake and do to subsidence of the land because the aquaphor has been drained. The lake would be deeper than it's historical past. The Tulare lake reappears from time to time and is currently filling up currently on it's own. It only 10 Miles from the California aqueduct system which actually could be used to supply the water the state needs. They can also dredge the lake to make it deeper in the future and it wouldn't cost 4 billion dollars to restore.

They should’ve never drained Californias Great Lake

If it’s anything like our ‘high speed rail’ we don’t have to worry because it’ll never be built!

The state water project in the 1960's had allocated future reservoirs as the population rises. They stopped building at 20 million. The current population is 39 million. California has neglected water infrastructure for decades and is now paying the price.

California definitely needs better water storage, but if this project goes like any other projects in California, expect it to be at least double the projected budget. It would also be a miracle if it got completed.

As a Sacramento native I have been watching this project, reservoir levels and snow pack for years. We desperately need something like this and I've been pretty excited about this on, but we definitely need to implement other solutions, I believe recently near Rocklin they've developed a method to locate underground basins with a helicopter and building pump stations to fill them. I I'm not sure about the cost on this but it seems once we identify hundreds of basin and build pump stations we replenish parts of the water table at will.

This is one of the best conceived ideas for capturing water in California that I’ve seen in years. I can’t wait till it gets started.

I would let the Tulare , Owens and other dried lakes fill up again. These would be our natural reservoirs.

Orange County in Southern California was mostly successful in remedying the county's water issues by expanding one of the main water treatment plants and adding steps to the treatment process so that the water can be pumped back up the Santa Ana River to natural sand percolation/filtration basins. The county reclaims about 20 to 30% of the water it uses this way.

When it comes to water here in California, it's either feast or famine so we do have a need for some kind of buffer to level out the dramatic spikes and dips in water availability. The project, on paper, sounds like a great idea to help truncate the extremes....but that's on paper. The real concerns I have is who will put in charge of this project and what kind of red tape? The project itself is a no-brainer as far as helping Californian central valley and as someone who loves trekking up the 395 for camping and trout fishing....I think this is an eventual must. That said, getting competent people to helm this project is also vital. If we can get the right people for the job...great, lets do it because for the long term health of Caliornian businesses and citizens, it's needed....however, if we can't find the right leadership and competent people to make this project a reality...then it's worth to sit on this, we may wind up worse off if the wrong folks are involved.

I've got to say, the production quality of this video was 10/10. The music was also 10/10. Phenomenal work!

Our biggest issue is that our aquifers are dangerously depleted. The problem is that where a lot of the water floods in the central valley, we have a very hard clay soil, and the water does not soak into the aquifers very well. Storage will only get us so far, but we need to find a way to get our aquifers refilled.

This is definitely a needed project, when California does get the heavy rain fall, they have to capture all that they can.

The video is crystal clear and a worthy project

It looks like stage one worked perfectly for me. We need to go into stage 2 with over 40 million people living in this state. I will 100% support Sites Reservoir!!!

I have been involved in the Water Industry for 38 years in California. Worked for various cities (Eureka, San Francisco, Santa Ana) and finished my career as a Stationary Engineer for EBMUD for 27 years. This project gets my vote, it will help the water management in the state for years.

I grew up in the Mojave desert. It's always a drought in the desert....lol
I moved to Mojave in 1984. Just before I left in 1992, we got a lot of rain and the desert blossomed into a beautiful thriving beautiy of green. It was the only time I've seen this. Even the smell of the desert changed.
Because the antelope valley mountain range stop's the moisture from the Pacific Ocean from reaching any where else.

Collecting water isnt rocket science. Im just amazed at the incompetence of the people in charge nowadays