Council-Backed Reservoir Receives $205 Million Boost from Biden, Congress

The Bay Area Council-backed Sites Reservoir project was awarded a $205.6 million grant from the federal Bureau of Reclamation’s Water Infrastructure Improvements for the Nation (WIIN) Act last week, the largest ever WIIN grant for a reservoir project. If built, the $4.5 billion, 1.5-million-acre-foot Sites Reservoir would be the largest reservoir in California since the opening of the New Melones reservoir in 1979 and would benefit 24 million water users across Silicon Valley, the East Bay, Central Valley, and Southern California. Sites has long been a Bay Area Council priority water project and since 2011 the Council has lobbied hard for the project’s required permitting, water rights applications, and state and federal funding requests. to receive state and federal funding, including from Proposition 1.

The Sites Reservoir Authority plans on breaking ground in 2026 after securing the remaining 10% of project funding and receiving final water rights approvals from the State Water Board. Learn more about Sites Reservoir in this profile from Paul Rogers at the Bay Area Newsgroup. To engage with the Council’s Water & Climate Resilience Committee, please contact Senior Vice President Adrian Covert.