California gets step closer to building giant new reservoir

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Note: This story is interesting mostly because it relied on a law passed last year that forced state-level judicial processes to move quickly.  The litigation was resolved in less than 6 months.
By Amy Graff,Senior News Editor
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Sites Reservoir is slated to be built at a site near the town of Maxwell in Colusa County.
Sites Reservoir is slated to be built at a site near the town of Maxwell in Colusa County. Rich Pedroncelli, STF / Associated Press

A major project to build a new massive reservoir in Northern California got a step closer to the start of construction, when a judge rejected a lawsuit from environment groups that don’t support the development, the California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office said Tuesday.

The Yolo County Superior Court approved the Sites Reservoir project within 148 days from when the suit was filed, in part due to a new law signed last year by Newsom to speed up the process to build projects geared at meeting the state’s climate goals. The court released its ruling on May 31.

“California needs more water storage, and we have no time to waste — projects like the Sites Reservoir will capture rain and snow runoff to supply millions of homes with clean drinking water,” the governor said in a June 4 news release. “We’re approaching this work with urgency, everything from water storage to clean energy and transportation projects.”

Friends of the River, the Sierra Club and California Sportfishing Protection Alliance oppose the Sites Reservoir. One of the many reasons these groups are against it is that they say it “will damage the Sacramento River and Bay-Delta ecosystems.”

If the estimated $4 billion project is built as planned amid farmland in the northern Sacramento Valley, just west of the town of Maxwell, Sites Reservoir would become the eighth largest reservoir in the state. It would have a capacity for 1.5 million acre-feet of water, enough to supply 3 million households a year with water.

“This added storage capacity will provide California with a more flexible water supply amid our changing climate,” the state said in a social media post.

By comparison, the state’s largest reservoir, Lake Shasta, holds more than 4.5 million acre-feet of water at full capacity.

The last major reservoir built in California was New Melones Lake in Calaveras and Tuolumne counties. It was complete in 1979 and has a capacity up to 2.4 million acre-feet.

The project is far from simple and will involve building multiple dams and new pipelines, before pulling water from the Sacramento River to fill a basin spread across 13,200 acres of land in Glenn and Colusa counties.

Construction is expected to begin in 2026, according to the Sacramento Bee.

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