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November 09, 2023

Comments

Joe

Ooops


Anderson Dam: Cost to rebuild major reservoir rises to $2.3 billion, tripling from two years ago

Increased labor and building materials, along with changed spillway design to blame, engineers say


The cost to bring Anderson Dam, which holds back the largest reservoir in Santa Clara County, up to modern earthquake standards has increased to $2.3 billion, water officials said Monday. That’s double what was estimated a year ago, triple the price tag from two years ago, and nearly certain to drive water rates higher next year across Silicon Valley.

“It’s very disturbing,” said John Varela, chairman of the Santa Clara Valley Water District, a government agency based in San Jose that owns the dam and is is overseeing the project.

“The cost escalations are just absurd,” he added. “It’s like a taxi cab when you go inside for a cup of coffee and the meter keeps running and your $5 fare goes to $10 and you say ‘Wait a minute.'”
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I'm not sure about the taxi analogy, but no one should be surprised that a public works project has escalating costs--after all we have the Inflation Production Act money flowing all over.

Joe

Oooops 2.0

In a stunning setback for efforts to expand water storage in Northern California as the state struggles with more severe droughts from climate change, a $1.5 billion plan to enlarge Los Vaqueros Reservoir in Contra Costa County and share the water with residents across the Bay Area has collapsed after more than seven years of planning and millions of dollars spent.

The project, which was promised $477 million in state funding six years ago by the administration of former Gov. Jerry Brown, had been viewed by water planners as one of the most promising efforts to increase reservoir storage anywhere in the state. Plans called for raising the height of the earthen dam at Los Vaqueros by 55 feet to 281 feet high.

But the project’s costs have grown steadily, from $980 million in 2018 to nearly $1.6 billion today.

On top of that, late last year the state Department of Fish and Game updated the permit that the Contra Costa Water District uses to draw water from the Delta into the reservoir. The agency said tougher standards are needed to protect the endangered Delta smelt, a tiny fish, which reduced the yield, or annual amount of water users could expect from the enlarged reservoir, by up to 30%.

Finally, the eight major water agencies that had formed a partnership to build the project couldn’t agree on which should shoulder the most financial risk and pay for additional cost overruns if they came up.

The San Francisco Public Utilities District, which serves 2.4 million people in San Francisco, the Peninsula, the South Bay and Southern Alameda County, cut its share (Ed: Commitment to buy) in half, from 40,000 acre-feet to 20,000.

The failure is a major setback for the eight water agencies — each of which contributed $4.4 million and thousands of hours of staff time. But it also is a blow to the Newsom administration, which has said that more reservoir storage is needed for California to capture water in wet years for dry years, as droughts become more severe.

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