OCR Text |
Show of Engineers include irrigation as one of their primary purposes. The Pine Flat Dam on Kings River and Isabella Dam on Kern River, insofar as they affect irrigation, will be used primarily to regulate present runoff and provide supplemental water. The irrigable areas below these reservoirs are served by existing canals; no new canal con- struction will be required. Folsom Reservoir on the American River upon completion by the Corps of Engineers is to be turned over to the Bureau of Reclamation for operation. Irrigation water from Folsom Reservoir will be used initially to serve lands in conjunction with the initial features of the Cen- tral Valley Project. Studies of the Bureau of Reclamation indicate, however, that the water could best serve lands north and south of the Ameri- can River, and such eventual use is contemplated. Another small unit of the American River divi- sion of the Central Valley Project is the authorized Sly Park unit, on the American-Cosumnes River divide in the Sierra foothills. It is designed to furnish supplemental water to 3,850 acres and new water to 3,500 acres. The authorized Bureau of Reclamation Solano Project on the western margin of the Sacramento Valley is designed to irrigate 78,000 acres of new land, provide supplemental water for 5,000 acres, and meet several municipal water-supply needs. The Corps of Engineers has six authorized mul- tiple-purpose projects which include irrigation as one of their objectives. They will serve land near the reservoirs. These are: (1) Terminus Project on Kaweah River; (2) Success Project on Tule River; (3) Black Butte Reservoir on Stony Creek; (4) New Hogan Project on Calaveras River; (5) New Melones Reservoir on the Stanislaus River; and (6) Iron Canyon Reservoir5 on the Sacra- mento River. Construction of the Iron Canyon Reservoir has been deferred. Situation at End of Present Authorized Program The present authorized Central Valley Project is designed to irrigate an additional 770,000 acres of new land and to make supplemental water avail- able for 1.6 million acres of land presently irrigated. Water will be available for an additional 150,000 acres of new land under the Folsom and Black Butte Reservoirs, for which the necessary canals have not been authorized. 8 Either alternate for or complementary to the Table Mountain Project. About half a million acres of irrigated land will still be in need of supplemental water, and strong local demands will still exist for water to irrigate at least several hundred thousand acres of new land. If the estimates of available water contained in the State Water Plan prove accurate, possibilities exist for irrigating many additional thousands of acres. Programs for Further Development Full control and use of the water resources of the Central Valley will demand a storage capacity of more than 20 million acre-feet of water. The Bureau of Reclamation has tentative plans for the construction of 38 major reservoirs and many smaller reservoirs to meet the combined demands of irrigation, municipal and industrial water sup- ply, electric power, flood control, navigation, and other water uses.6 Extensive use of ground water storage also will be necessary. Completion of this program may take many decades. Hydroelectric Power Capacity, Yearly Production, Area Served The Central Valley has three Federal hydroelec- tric plants having a total installed capacity of 456,000 kilowatts. Most of this power is developed by the Bureau of Reclamation's Shasta and Keswick plants on the Sacramento River. Sixty-one exist- ing utility hydroelectric plants of 2,500 kilowatts or more installed capacity have a total installation of 1,700,200 kilowatts. The total installed hydro- electric capacity in the basin is 2,156,200 kilowatts (table 1). In addition to the plants included in the table, there are 13 small utility plants of less than 2,500 kilowatts capacity with a total installed capacity of 18,540 kilowatts. The total active storage capacity at existing hydroelectric developments in the basin amounts to about 6,684,000 acre-feet. The largest reser- voirs are Shasta on the Sacramento River, Lake Almanor on the Feather River, Exchequer on the Merced River, Hetch Hetchy and Don Pedro on the Tuolumne River, and Pardee on the Moke- lumne River. A major portion of the hydroelectric power developed in the Central Valley Basin is marketed 6 Many of these reservoirs also are included in plans of the Corps of Engineers. 91 |