The aqueduct is several canals that feed water from Northern and Central California to Southern California. Michael Sabbaghian is an Executive Advisor with the DWR and says that over the last few decades, several of the canals have experienced subsidence, which is the sinking of land.
“That has resulted in four segments of canals that we have, that deliver water to Central Valley and Southern California, to be impacted negatively, and their capacity has been reduced, they cannot deliver as much water,” said Sabbaghian.
Sabbaghian says capacity has gone down between 20% to 60%, depending on the section and that this has a two-fold impact on Southern California. He said, “One is direct water delivery, as you guys receive from Northern California, and secondly the massive agriculture that is in San Joaquin Valley, that without this water wouldn’t happen, so it would impact basically the availability of food.”
Sabbaghian added that the project advances several goals set by Governor Newsom in his 2020 Water Resilience Portfolio. “This particular one, it aims to meet several actions within that portfolio, which has to do with water quality, water supply, delivering water to disadvantaged communities, and so forth and so on,” added Sabbagian.
The $100 Million for sections of the four canals is just the beginning of a 10-year plan for the canals and is expected to cost $2.4 Billion.
