California State Water Project

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The California State Water Project, commonly known as the SWP, is the world's largest publicly built and operated water and power development and conveyance system. The SWP was designed and is operated by the California Department of Water Resources. The original purpose of the project was to provide water for arid Southern California which lacks adequate local water resources to provide for the growth the region has experienced. Today, the SWP provides drinking water for over 23 million people and generates an average 6.5 million MWh of hydroelectricity annually. However, as the largest single consumer of power in the state, its net usage is 5.1 million MWh.^[1]

Construction began in the late 1950s, with major funding approved in a 1960 bond measure. The vote on the bond split along North-South lines, as Northern Californians opposed the measure as a boondoggle and an attempt to steal their water resources. Most of the water (roughly 80%) carried by the project is used for agriculture, primarily in the San Joaquin Valley, since pumping the water over the Tehachapi Mountains is costly and Southern California has other sources of water such as the Owens River, tributary creeks to Mono Lake and the Colorado River.

Primary features of the project include Oroville Dam, San Luis Reservoir, and the California Aqueduct. In dry years, water pumped from the Sacramento River Delta creates a hazard to spring-run salmon, as the currents that the salmon spawn normally follow to the Pacific Ocean go to the pumps instead. This and other water use and environmental problems led to the creation of the CALFED Bay-Delta Program or CALFED in 1994.

In May 1972, Reader's Digest published a story about the SWP, claiming that it is one of the only two manmade objects visible from space (the other being the Great Wall of China).