Deputy Interior Secretary Tommy Beaudreau and other administration officials announced the funding during a visit Wednesday to Imperial Dam along the Colorado River in Yuma, Ariz., which has received more than $8 million to repair silt-filtering basins, according to department.
“As we work to address record drought and changing climate conditions across the West, these investments in our aging water infrastructure will conserve community water supplies and revitalize delivery systems in the water,” Beaudreau said in a statement.
Severe droughts have plagued much of the West in recent years, and federal and state officials are figuring out how to conserve precious water supplies and ease the blow for communities forced to water cut. The recent barrage of atmospheric rivers in California has led to the opposite problem, with extensive flooding test reservoirs, levees and other water infrastructure.
“This winter’s onslaught of devastating winter storms is just the latest in a long line of weather whiplash in California that has strained and damaged our aging infrastructure,” Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) told reporters Wednesday during a call about the new funding. “And because we know the threat of climate change is an existential threat, we need to be strategic and intentional about how we invest in infrastructure as extreme weather events come at us more frequently.”
Federal funding for water-related issues in the West is increasing, with an additional $4 billion allocated to alleviate the effects of drought as part of the Inflation Reduction Act. The fund will include payments to farmers to temporarily avoid planting to save water, as well as longer-term investments in more efficient irrigation systems and improving canals to reduce water loss.
“Unprecedented conditions require new solutions,” said US Bureau of Reclamation Commissioner Camille Calimlim Touton.
Big-ticket items in Interior repair projects include $43 million to refurbish generators and turbines at the San Luis hydropower plant in Merced County, Calif.; $42 million to replace transformers at California’s Spring Creek Power Facility for pumps that move water from the Trinity River to the Sacramento River; and $66 million for fish hatchery upgrades on the Trinity River in California.
While most of the funding is aimed at repairing aging infrastructure, some is aimed at preventing water from being wasted. In Idaho, $4 million will go toward lining six miles of a canal in the Boise area to help prevent runoff. Another $4 million will be spent to repair a canal in Washington state’s Columbia River Basin that has been leaking water for years, according to a list of funded projects by the Bureau of Reclamation.
The issue of lost water – through evaporation or other forms of waste – has become a central point in the Colorado River negotiations. Many of the basin states want to attribute significant cuts to water use based on evaporation and other losses. California, which stands to lose the most from that approach, rejected the plan.
