SACRAMENTO, California — California officials are pumping up their spending on the state’s largest proposed reservoir in decades after a new cost estimate showed a ballooning price tag.
What happened: The California Water Commission unanimously approved increasing its allocation of money from a 2014 water bond, Proposition 1, to the Sites Reservoir Project by $218.9 million to $1 billion total on Wednesday. The boost came from funds it had previously allocated to an expansion of the Los Vaqueros reservoir in the foothills between the Central Valley and the Bay Area, which fell apart last year amid disagreements between local agencies over who should pay for what.
The new funding doesn’t completely make up for the rising price tag for the project, which the Sites Project Authority now estimates at between $6.2 billion and 6.8 billion instead of the 10-year-old $4.5 billion estimate because of inflation. But backers still welcomed the boost as a positive sign.
“We’re excited about the state’s participation,” said Jerry Brown, the Sites Project Authority’s executive director. “It’s a positive.”
