California Central Valley Project
The following excerpt is from the Bureau of Reclamation article by Eric A. Stene:
“Throughout his political life, Thomas Jefferson contended the United States was an agriculturally based society. Agriculture may be king, but compared to the queen, Mother Nature, it is a weak monarch. Nature consistently proves to mankind who really controls the realm. The Central Valley of California is a magnificent example of this. The Sacramento River watershed receives two-thirds to three-quarters of northern California's precipitation though it only has one-third to one-quarter of the land. The San Joaquin River watershed occupies two-thirds to three-quarters of northern California's land, but only collects one-third to one-quarter of the precipitation. The Sacramento Valley suffers from floods, and floods and droughts alternately afflict San Joaquin”
Though Mother Nature rules, mankind cannot resist a challenge. As early as the 1870s, ideas appeared planning to transfer excess water from the Sacramento River to the often parched tracts in the San Joaquin Valley. After years of planning and debate about the proposed project led nowhere, California appealed to the Federal government for assistance. The Bureau of Reclamation and the Army Corps of Engineers (COE) vied for the opportunity to construct the facilities on the colossal project, by now called the Central Valley Project.
California's history encompasses several hundred years of habitation by various groups of Native Americans. European settlement of the state began with the Spanish, in the seventeenth century. The Spanish established Roman Catholic missions and other settlements along the California coast, but rarely ventured to the interior of the territory. Citizens of the United States began immigrating into California in the 1840s. Increasing migratory pressure by the settlers, in many north Mexican provinces, and political machinations by the United States; sparked the Mexican-American War in 1846. The United States defeated Mexico in 1848. The treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo gave Mexico's northern states, including California, to the United States for $10 million. The acquisition of California alone, brought the United States riches the country did not know existed, and more problems to go along with them.
The discovery of gold at Sutter's Mill in 1849, brought a flood of Americans into the area. California became a state the next year. The first California Legislature in 1850 immediately enacted laws to deal with the state's most precious resource, not gold, but water. The California Legislature adopted English Common Law's riparian water rights. According to that law, owners of land bordering streams or bodies of water had a right to a reasonable amount of that water. Owners, whose land did not border bodies of water, had no rights to any of the water. The laws severely restricted the number of landholders who had access to California's water supply.
The 1850 California Legislature gave the State Surveyor General responsibility for water development. In 1878, the California government created the office of the State Engineer, which then became responsible for state water planning. William Hamilton Hall, the first State Engineer, conducted a broad study of California's water problems, on a $100,000 budget. Hall planned to appropriate more money, and conduct a more detailed study, but for unspecified reasons, the legislature abolished the State Engineer position in 1889.
The California Legislature passed the Wright Act in 1887, forming irrigation districts. One Reclamation official considered the Wright Act a model for irrigation legislation in the west. Others claimed it was a good idea, but badly implemented. The districts' encountered problems in selling their bonds, filling their reservoirs, and fairly allocating water. Future Reclamation Commissioner, then Wyoming State Engineer, Elwood Mead declared the Wright Act, "a disgrace to any self-governing people." California amended the Wright Act in 1897, stopping the establishment of irrigation districts until the formation of the Irrigation Districts Bond Certification Commission.
The Federal government became interested in California water during the nineteenth century. Lt. Colonel B.S. Alexander studied the Sacramento and San Joaquin Rivers in 1873. In his report to President Ulysses S. Grant, Alexander visualized a system of canals to complete an exchange of water from the Sacramento to the San Joaquin Valley.
A report on the "Sacramento Project" in 1904, first connected the U.S. Reclamation Service to water problems in the Central Valley, but that connection remained limited. California created the State Reclamation Board in 1911, and authorized it to spend $33 million on a flood control project in the Central Valley. The Reclamation Service reported on the possible storage of Sacramento River water at Iron Canyon near Red Bluff. In 1920, Homer J. Gault, a Reclamation engineer, and W.F. McClure, the California State Engineer, wrote another report on Sacramento River storage in Iron Canyon.
In a 1919 letter to California Governor William Stephens, Colonel Robert Bradford Marshall, Chief Geographer for the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), proposed a plan to build storage reservoirs along the Sacramento River system, and transfer water from the Sacramento Valley to the San Joaquin Valley via two large canals lying on both sides of the Sacramento River. The plan earned Marshall the nickname, "The Father of the Central Valley Project." …more
References:
Colorado Doctrine of Riparian Rights, http://www.jstor.org/sici?sici=0044-0094(189811)8%3A2%3C71%3ATCDORR%3E2.0.CO%3B2-D
For more information on Central Valley Project go to WWDL Search
