Thursday September 18, 2025
DAMMED IF YOU DO: California was supposed to kick off a new era of dam building when voters passed a $7.5 billion water bond in 2014. But ten years later, only one dam project from the list is still alive.
Sites, which would divert water from the Sacramento River into an offstream reservoir capable of storing water for 3 million homes annually, is the sole survivor, as of Wednesday, of a batch of four new or expanded reservoirs that California officials had envisioned would bolster supplies for cities and farmers.
It’s by some measure the beneficiary of others’ failures: The California Water Commission directed money last month from the other projects to Sites, which is now slated to get $1 billion from the bond, up from $780 million. The commission on Wednesday also gave the project a $10 million advance for pre-construction planning to avoid it running out of money by July 2026.
The string of project failures underscores an inconvenient reality: even with the rare political alignment of Gov. Gavin Newsom and President Donald Trump in support of more water storage, the numbers haven’t penciled out. That only further elevates Sites as a test case for whether California can still build big.
“I’d be lying if I said it didn’t cause me to question some things,” said Jerry Brown, the executive director of the Sites Project Authority, of the collapse of other projects. “But I personally remain confident that this is going to get done because it needs to get done and because it’s a good project.”
The other projects have steadily fallen by the wayside as timelines have dragged on and costs have risen. Backers of Temperance Flat, near Fresno, pulled out in 2020. An expansion of Los Vaqueros Reservoir in the Bay Area dried up last year. And the Santa Clara County-based Valley Water District pulled the plug last month on plans to expand Pacheco Reservoir after costs ballooned past $3 billion.
Valley Water Board Chair Tony Estremera, who recalled campaigning for the 2014 bond, said the agency found cheaper ways to meet its water needs, including through conservation, and didn’t want to saddle ratepayers with higher bills.
“These are very difficult projects, and no one has been able to get there,” Estremera said when he voted to suspend Pacheco. “We have tried to support these projects, and we hope that Sites will make it.”
Sites has a lot of political will behind it. Newsom has cast it as a key part of his “abundance” agenda as the state faces the ups and downs of climate change and even got state lawmakers two years ago to fast-track judicial review of related lawsuits.
The Trump administration is getting in, too: Federal water officials started formal negotiations this month to potentially double their own share of both the funding and water, currently around 9 percent.
But the project isn’t immune from the inflationary costs and delays that have sunk its peers. A new estimate in June put Sites’ price tag at between $6.2 billion and $6.8 billion instead of the 10-year-old $4.5 billion. That has already driven one of the 22 water agencies that have expressed interest in the project to want to pull back, Brown told POLITICO. He declined to name which one, but said that small agricultural agencies in Northern California are most sensitive to price increases.
Brown said he’s well aware that Los Vaqueros fell apart largely because of disagreements among water agencies over sharing costs, so he’s trying to avoid any bad surprises. Even the big guys aren’t totally sure yet, though: The Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, for example, has tentatively signed up for a 22 percent share, but is broadly reconsidering big water projects because of declining water sales.
Brown is anticipating finalizing the financial commitments next spring — though he’s still waiting for the State Water Resources Control Board to approve a permit to divert water from the Sacramento River, which is tangled up in broader negotiations about flows in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta.
California Water Commissioner Daniel Catrin proposed on Wednesday the agency hold a meeting under a tent at the groundbreaking, tentatively planned for October of 2026. “It’ll be a historic day,” said Brown.
“No kidding,” Catrin quipped.