SACRAMENTO. Calif. — Record rainfall in California during the recent storms have invigorated a renewed push for an increase in water infrastructure funding.
A group of Assembly Republican lawmakers gathered on a levee on the American River in Sacramento to call out the state’s Democratic leadership for failing to invest in water infrastructure to aid with flooding and water storage.
Around 22 trillion gallons of rain will fall in California according to estimates. However, state Assembly Republicans blame the lack of infrastructure as the root cause for why most of the water will go uncaptured.
“It’s a failure in leadership,” Assembly Republican leader James Gallagher said. “The Democratic supermajority and the governor have failed to make investments in water infrastructure.”
In 2014, voters supported a water bond that authorized billions of dollars to go toward state water supply infrastructure and water storage projects. Since then, no new reservoir or other water project has been built.
“These projects have been tied up in the bureaucracy of executive agencies,” Gallagher said. “And the governor has not pushed these agencies to permit these projects and get them going. And now here we are almost 10 years later without anything being built.”
Republicans also called for more investments in flood protections all across the despite. In recent years, California has invested in flood control infrastructure in urban areas, but rural areas have not received the same investment.
“Right now the small town of Wilton had to be evacuated because of a failure to invest in vital flood control infrastructure,” Gallagher said.
California has invested $1.3 billion in flood protections since 2019.
On Tuesday, Gov. Gavin Newsom unveiled the state’s 2023-2024 budget plan, which included $202 million in new investments for flood protections. One-hundred-and-thirty-six million dollars of the new investment will go toward urban flood risk reduction, $41 million for delta levees and $25 million for Central Valley flood protection.
Newsom’s Communications Director Erin Mellon said the governor has allocated billions to expedite water projects and modernize the state’s water infrastructure, while also reducing permitting barriers to get the work done quickly.
The budget has a $22.5 billion deficit. While a portion of the budget is directed to help with drought and floods, there are no new investments in the development of water storage sites.
“What’s ironic is this week the governor talked about the financial reserves that he has maintained in the budget, but we have no water reserves, we do not have adequate water reserves,” Assembly member Diane Dixon (R-Newport Beach) said.
By finally constructing sites and other reservoirs, Dixon says California can finally start protecting the vital resource without putting a burden on residents. Burdens such as calling for people to limit how often they wash their dishes or do laundry.
“It’s not rocket science. Reservoirs exist all over the country, all over the world. Build the reservoir… help the people [sic] be better prepared for the next drought we know will come,” Dixon said.
Taking action to implement more water storage, last December, Assembly member Juan Alanis, R-Modesto, introduced ACA 2 to codify the goal of increasing California’s water supply in the state constitution. The legislation would provide guaranteed funding for water infrastructure.
“It’s a commonsense proposal for our communities and they’re depending on it,” Alanis said.
Along with ACA 2, Assembly member Devon Mathis, R-Poterville, authored AB 62, which aims to codify Newsom’s goal to increase the state’s water supply by 3.7 million-acre feet by 2030, with the goal of reaching 4 million acre-feet by 2040.
“The governor set these goals. These are goals that have been put out before,” Mathis said. “This is just codifying it so we can hold his feet to the fire.”
While the target year of increased water storage is decades away, the Republican leaders say projects like Sites Reservoir can be built quickly.
“Sites is the one that would be very easy to do, the money’s already been allocated for it. It’s gotten federal money allocated toward it; the money is there, the funding is there. The only thing standing in the way is the permitting process,” Gallagher said.
Now, Republicans will be focused on streaming policies to eliminate bureaucracy that prevents infrastructure projects like Sites from moving forward.
“It shouldn’t take this long to build vital infrastructure projects in the state, that’s the frustration, and that’s what we want to change,” Gallagher said.
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