california water diversion south

Calif. Gov. Jerry Brown Plans to Pipe Sacramento River Water Southward

California Gov. Jerry Brown said on May 3 in San Diego that he will soon unveil his plan for channelling some of the northern Sacramento River flow, through two giant pipelines, to augment water supplies for the San Francisco Bay area, the Central Valley, and southern California. 


In effect, this amounts to long overdue implementation of parts of the original 1957 {California Water Plan} that were left unfinished.


Many of the same hydraulic engineers, who devised the plans to fully harness the northern state river run-off for the benefit of all California, well understood that even if accomplished, the {California Water Plan} itself would eventually be inadequate, and these same engineers backed NAWAPA -- a continental-scale diversion project. Now, with 23 million more people in the state since 1960, this necessity is pressing.

Brown, addessed a gathering of 900 businessmen in San Diego last week, saying that the details of his pipeline proposal will be made known, once an environmental impact study is done. The {San Franchsico Chronicle}, reporting on Brown's presentation, says that the two giant pipelines would go from the Sacramento River, underneath the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, and onward. Brown said that dealing with this water conveyance "has been kicking around for 50 years," and that his father, Edmund G. "Pat" Brown," was working on it when he was governor in the 1960s.