Working to expand water supplies for California’s next drought, a coalition of 12 Bay Area water agencies took a significant step Monday toward an $800 million expansion of one of the largest reservoirs in the Bay Area — Los Vaqueros Reservoir in the rolling hills near the Alameda-Contra Costa county line.
The construction would expand the size of Los Vaqueros from its current 160,000 acre-feet capacity to 275,000 acre-feet, enough water when full for the annual needs of 1.4 million people.
The Santa Clara Valley Water District, East Bay Municipal Utility District, Alameda County Water District, San Francisco Public Utilities Commission and other agencies are contributing to the studies of the project, and see it as a cooperative solution to water shortages and a way to better tie their systems together as insurance against emergencies like earthquakes.
“It’s a way to expand the benefits of the reservoir and make it work for a larger group.” On Monday, the Contra Costa Water District, which owns the reservoir, released new environmental studies and scheduled a series of six public meetings from July 11 to July 27 in Concord, Oakland, San Jose, Brentwood, Sacramento and Los Banos to discuss the specifics in the new documents, which are officially called the draft supplement to the final environmental impact study.
Costs will likely be decided based on the amount of water each agency would get.
It was built in 1998 with $450 million from the 500,000 customers of the Contra Costa Water District.
That project was finished in 2012.
The idea of expanding Los Vaqueros Reservoir has been around for a while.
The project would have a relatively minor impact, because a reservoir is already there.
When Los Vaqueros’ dam was raised five years ago, the Contra Costa Water district purchased roughly 5,000 acres in Alameda, Contra Costa and San Joaquin counties to provide habitat for the endangered San Joaquin Valley kit fox and other species whose habitat was submerged when the lake level rose.