WATER POLITICS

California has more than 2,700 state, federal and local dams and reservoirs, including roughly 300 in Southern California. I include Hoover Dam in that count—even though it sits outside of the state—because Southern Californians still receive roughly half of their water from the rapidly collapsing Colorado River system.

Under the hard limits set by nature, the seven Colorado River Basin states have no choice but to accept drastic cuts in the coming years. Yet after years of negotiations, the upper basin (Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming) and the lower basin states (Arizona, California and Nevada) still cannot agree on how those cuts should be shared.

That stalemate likely leaves the final decision to the Trump Administration’s Interior Department, which denies climate change, virtually ignores—if not deliberately worsens—environmental impacts, and whose proposed solutions favor the upper basin.

The uncertainty of Colorado River supplies adds to California’s other existential water crisis: the diminishing returns from the Sierras due to overuse and climate change.

California’s lawmakers, farmers, environmental and tribal groups, and south?state water agencies—not to mention its voters—must find more practical ways to manage their water resources than treating them as fuel for endless growth and corporate profit.

The resources for change are there but still largely untapped: conservation, greater water-use efficiency, wastewater recycling, stormwater capture, local and regional supply development and sharing. Yet, a look at the history of California’s water infrastructure—in the partial chronology below—shows how difficult that shift will be.

Water infrastructure milestones:

Early 1800s: Padre Dam or Old Mission Dam and 5-mile flume. Padre Dam Municipal Water District’s (Padre) origins trace back to Spain’s colonization of “California” and the founding of Father Junipero Sera’s first mission, San Diego de Alcala, in 1769. The district takes its name from the Old Mission Dam, built in the early 1800s by the mission’s brutalized indigenous slaves after an uprising destroyed the mission edifice and killed two of its administrators in 1775.

The dam—12 ft high 220 ft long, with its tiled flume stretching five miles—was the first major irrigation project on California’s coast. For a brief period, it provided a reliable water supply in an arid climate for the mission’s 1,500 residents, including clergy, soldiers, and indigenous slaves.

Paternalistic Spanish colonists were displaced by rich cattle ranchers after the war for

After Mexican independence (1810-1821), paternalistic Spanish rule gave way to to wealthy ranching families who dominated the region. Following the Mexican-American War (1846-1848), waves of gold seekers, land developers, and American homesteaders transformed the area yet again.

In the mid to late 19th century, federally backed land-grants—small parcels for homesteaders and vast tracks for railroad companies—lured flocks of European American settlers westward.

Rich and poor migrants alike believed they would build personal empires on the free land they received. But the land would only be productive if it could be irrigated, warned John Wesley Powell, the era’s preeminent explorer and water-scientist.

Still, fortune seekers, lured by the theory that “rain was bound to follow the plow,” pressed ahead with religious zeal.

Science proved otherwise, however. The raid did not follow the plow, and the myth collapsed under the weight of the West’s aridity.

Marc Reisner summed up the situation in Cadillac Desert: The American West and its Disappearing Water:

Speculation. Water monopoly. Land monopoly. Corruption. Catastrophe.

Instead of the profits and paradise they imagined, most settlers were menaced by severe droughts and bought out by speculators gaming the federal system of land grants. In Southern California they pumped groundwater basins, lakes, and rivers to dangerously low levels. Rather than conserve what remained, they lobbied for ever more public funding to build dams and canals that would carry water hundreds of miles—from the Colorado River and from Northern California’s rivers—to supply the region’s rapidly growing population.

Today, the Colorado River no longer flows into the Gulf of California, it trickles, and every major river in California but one as been dammed. Watersheds have been severely diminished, along with the fish and wildlife that depend on them. Groundwater basins continue to be overdrawn, and the region’s historic cycle of drought is now intensified by climate change to the point of looming catastrophe.

Through it all, California’s native peoples were devastated—largely exterminated by land theft, starvation, disease, and state-sanctioned genocide.

After Padre Dam Municipal Water District’s failed failed 2010 attempt to build a water pipeline through Kumeyaay burial grounds, the native descendants of the mission era now work closely with the district on local water issues.

That cooperation is far from universal across the Southwest. Many other tribal groups continue to protest that their water rights remain far weaker than promised (more on that here, too), overshadowed by political leaders who prioritize the interests of big agriculture, land developers, and urban water agencies.

1913: The 233 mile-long Los Angeles Aqueduct is completed, carrying water from Owens Lake in the Owners Valley to the city. Cost: $23 million (about $609 million today).

1919: The first official proposal for a statewide water project—moving Sacramento River water through the San Joaquin Valley and across the Tehachapi Mountains to Southern California—appears in a U.S. Geological Survey.

1926: St. Francis Dam is completed to store Owens River water. It collapses in 1928, killing hundreds.

1928: Metropolitan Water District of Southern California (MWD) is formed to bring Colorado River water to Southern California via the Colorado River Aqueduct.

1928: Boulder Canyon Project Act authorizes construction of Hoover Dam and the All-American Canal, an 82-mile aqueduct that brings Colorado River water to farms and residents in the Imperial Valley—its sole source of imported water.

1930: Los Angeles voters approve a $40 million bond ($847 million today) to extend the L.A. Aqueduct 105-miles, diverting additional water from Mono Lake.

1931: SoCal voters approve $220 million bond ($3.5 billion today) MWD to build Colorado River Aqueduct, which begins operation in 1939.

1933: Construction begins on Hoover Dam. Total cost: $817 million (2021 dollars). A water life-line for Southern California, but maybe not for much longer:

California, which draws 4.4 million acre-feet annually from the Colorado River, faces potential cuts of up to 3.9 million acre-feet per year under some scenarios, according to the Bureau’s (U.S. Bureau of Reclamation) analysis. That could hit Southern California cities and Imperial Valley agriculture hardest. From the Desert Sun newspaper, Jan. 2026.

1935: The Central Valley Project (CVP) becomes a federal project, intended to deliver water to regions of the Central Valley.

1936: FDR’s Flood Control Act authorizes $310 million for dam construction in western states as part of New Deal infrastructure spending during the Great Depression.

1941: MWD completes Colorado River Aqueduct, 242 miles long. Cost: about $3 billion (2003 dollars).

1942: Imperial Valley farmers begin receiving water from the All American Canal.

1943: San Vicente Dam (Lakeside, San Diego County) opens. Cost: $2.7 million.

1945: Post war economic growth triggers California’s “second gold rush.” Millions of people migrate to the state—especially Los Angeles—where surface water and groundwater basins are already overdrawn.

1945 – 1957: The California Water Plan and related studies assess statewide water needs and propose a massive state project (to become known as the State Water Project) to move northern river water to San Francisco, San Joaquin Valley, and Southern California. Eventually will result in a massive 705-mile conveyance system (the California Aqueduct), the largest state water project ever constructed. A lasting north–south political divide emerges and successive SWP expansion proposals spark shifting alliances among Central Valley farmers, conservationists, and Southern California water agencies.

1945: Shasta Dam is completed. Construction began in 1938. Cost: $36 million ($654 million today). It becomes California’s largest reservoir, capable of holding 4.5m acre-feet.

1950: California has 80,000 groundwater extraction pumps—many in the Central Valley—and 6.5 million irrigated acres. Over-pumping causes the San Joaquin Valley to sink more than 12 inches (and up to 30 feet in some areas)—between 1925-1970, and by as much one foot a year since 2006. Subsidence continues today.

1950: California pop. 10.5 million.

1951: The Central Valley Project begins delivering water—about 20 percent of state’s supply—from Shasta Lake for up to 450 miles south to the Bay Area and San Joaquin Valley farms. Construction cost: $3.5 billion (1992 dollars); total with operation and interest: $14.7 billion (2018).

1960: Voters approve the State Water Project (California Aqueduct) through the $1.75 billion California Water Resources Development Bond Act. Construction had begun in 1957 after a severe northern floods.

1960: California has 8 million acres of irrigated land and a population of 15.7 million.

1968: Orville Dam on the Feather river completed for hydropower and flood control. despite warnings that it could burst under heavy rains. Cost: $121 million ($917 million today). In 2017, heavy rains, cause spillway failure, forcing evacuation of 188,000 downstream residents.

1969: San Luis Reservoir—a part of both the SWP and CVP—opens on the San Luis Creek in Merced County. Capacity: 2,041,000 acre-feet (California’s 5th largest reservoir).

1970: A second Los Angeles aqueduct (137 miles) is completed parallel to the 1913 aqueduct. Cost: $89 million ($603 million today). Combined flow to Los Angeles reaches 450,000 acre-feet per year.

1970s: Water rates become MWD’s primary source of revenue for capital and operating costs.

1971: The California Aqueduct begins pumping water 715 miles to Southern California. New dams are prohibited on North Coast rivers.

1973: State Water Project is declared complete, but is seen by supporters of expansion to be eternal.

1975: Construction of Auburn dam is halted permanently due to seismic risks. Cost estimates rise to $9.6 billion (2007).

1979: New Melones Dam is completed as part of Central Valley Project on the Stanislas River. Holding capacity of 2,400,000/AF. Cost: $1.08 billion.

1982: Voters overwhelmingly reject the Peripheral Canal initiative—the first of several major and ultimately unsuccessful efforts by successive California governors to route water around or under the Delta to the San Joaquin Valley and Southern California.

1983: California Supreme Court applies the public trust doctrine to Mono Lake, requiring LADWP to restore Mono Lake, which it still hasn’t done.

1988: MWD and the Imperial Irrigation District (IID) sign a water transfer agreement guarantying 100,000 acre-feet of water annually to MWD.

1990: California pop. 29.8 million.

1998: IID negotiates to send 200,000/AF per year to San Diego County, which was at the start of a decades-long water war with MWD over water supplies .

1999: MWD completes off-stream Diamond Valley Lake, an off-stream reservoir filled with Colorado River and SWP water.

2009: The All-American Canal Lining Project is completed, capturing 68,000 acre-feet of annual seepage. The rerouted water eliminates flows that had supported Mexicali residents and nearby wetlands.

2015: The $1 billion (Poseidon Water) Carlsbad Ocean Desalination plant begins operating at two-three times the cost of imported MWD water, despite lingering environmental concerns. By the 2020s, it becomes a financial burden for the San Diego County Water Authority, which scrambles to find buyers for its unneeded water.

2021: President Joe Biden’s infrastructure Act—billed as the biggest stimulus package in American history—and American Rescue Plan Act provide $43 billion to California, including billions for water infrastructure projects, in addition to roughly $4 billion in state funds.

2022: The proposed $1.4 billion (Poseidon Water) Huntington Beach Ocean Desalination plant is unanimously rejected by California Coastal Commission.

2022: A much smaller south Orange County (Doheny) ocean desalination project using subsurface intake is approved by the California Coastal Commission.

2023: The Orange County Water District and Orange County Sanitation District of final GWRS expansion complete the final expansion of the Groundwater Replenishment System, producing 130,000 acre-feet per year of potable recycled wastewater—enough for 1 million people—stored in Orange County groundwater basin. Cost: $900 million.

Other sources include: Introduction to Water in California – David Carle; and The Great Thirst – Norris Hundley Jr.