Sites Team Intent on Building Reservoir

Manager Alicia Forsythe Speaks at Three Valleys Leadership Breakfast

2024-04-14 - By Elizabeth Smilor

“Our vision is affordable water, sustainably managed for California’s farms, cities and the environment for the future. Sites Reservoir will be the eighth largest lake in California when we build it. And I say ‘when we build it,’ because it is imminent. It is coming.”

Alicia Forsythe

Sites Project Authority Environmental Planning and Permitting Manager

In her comprehensive presentation, Forsythe explained how Sites Reservoir, proposed north of the Sacramento-san Joaquin Delta, is an off-stream reservoir that will capture and store a portion of stormwater from the Sacramento River – after all other water rights and regulatory requirements are met – and release water to communities, farms and wildlife during drier years.

“This is the natural evolution of water infrastructure. River dams, like those along the Klamath River that are being removed, have lived out their useful life. This is an off-stream reservoir,” she said following the event. “We have to build tools for the future to help us adapt to climate change. Sites is just one of these tools.”

The Final Environmental Impact Report for Sites was certified at the end of last year and it received judicial streamlining approval from the governor’s office, which will move the permitting process through litigation more quickly. Construction is scheduled to begin in 2026 for a 2033 completion. “It’s good to know that the Sites team is sensitive to environmental concerns and working with partners to ensure that it is a co-benefit project.”

“Why are we driving so hard? Because it costs a lot of taxpayer dollars. If it’s not going to work, then we need to stop spending taxpayers’ money,” Forsythe said. “This project has been on the books since the 1960s, so let’s build it or let’s put it on the shelf and retire it. We see this as a pivotal moment. It’s time that we call this to question. It’s time that we get this done. It’s time to make the tough decisions.”

Jeff Hanlon Three Valleys’ Director

Its time has come. Sites Reservoir is a critical infrastructure project for California’s changing water supply challenges and it needs to be built, said Sites Project Authority Environmental Planning and Permitting Manager Alicia Forsythe, to a receptive audience at the Three Valleys Municipal Water District Leadership Breakfast.

“Our vision is affordable water, sustainably managed for California’s farms, cities and the environment for the future,” said Forsythe. “Sites Reservoir will be the eighth largest lake in California when we build it. And I say ‘when we build it,’ because it is imminent. It is coming.”

Forsythe was the keynote speaker at the Three Valleys event on Feb. 29 at the Kellogg West Conference Center at Cal Poly Pomona, the first of three such events planned for 2024. About 130 water and city leaders as well as representatives from the offices of several State Senate and Assembly members attended and were pleased with the project update from Forsythe.

“I love her passion for the project. If you weren’t a believer, you’d be a believer after hearing her. I like her can-do attitude,” said Three Valleys’ Board President Jody Roberto. “I’m intrigued by all they have accomplished and by all the challenges they still face.”

If Sites were operational today, the storms of 2023 and early 2024 would have nearly filled the reservoir, which will have a storage capacity of 1.5 million acrefeet, or enough for about 4.5 million people for a year. California’s water supply is expected to decline by 10 percent over the next decade.

“If we had Sites Reservoir, the back-to-back years with a 5% allocation of water from the State Water Project, might have looked much better,” said Three Valleys’ General Manager and Chief Engineer Matt Litchfield after Forsythe’s presentation. “One thing that did stick out was she shared several times that ‘it’s time, it’s time.’ I couldn’t agree more and I know there’s a lot of water professionals in this room that would agree as well. It’s time to get Sites Reservoir built.”

Sites Reservoir, Forsythe explained, will serve as a water bank for communities, agriculture and the environment. Water agencies, including the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California with 26 member agencies including Three Valleys and

others in attendance, irrigation districts, the California Department of Water Resources and the federal Bureau of Reclamation are stakeholders in the project. The state will hold 17 percent in the reservoir for environmental benefit. The project capacity is smaller than it once was in part to protect endangered salmon and wildlife refuges nearby, she said.

“It’s good to know that the Sites team is sensitive to environmental concerns and working with partners to ensure that it is a co-benefit project,” said Three Valleys’ Director Jeff Hanlon. “I’ve thought a lot about Sites and this talk helped to crystallize what a major stormwater capture opportunity Sites is and how it could be the water storage we need in a climate change world. Today, we get our water predominantly from snowpack storage. By 2100, our water supply may be predominantly rain, so we need to figure out how to move from the naturally occurring snowpack storage – water as a solid to water as a liquid – off-stream.”

Prior to working with the Sites Authority, Forsythe spent over 10 years with the Bureau of Reclamation. There, she oversaw operations in the Klamath and Lahontan Basins, and led the San Joaquin River Restoration Program, the largest Federally led river restoration program in the nation.

She said the Sites team is also working closely with the neighboring communities and plans to build a bridge across the reservoir to keep the communities connected and to make sure school buses can travel easily to schools in Maxwell from smaller towns. They are still in negotiations with landowners, she said. The most vehement opposition to the project comes from environmental protection groups and fisheries.

“We’ve waited 80 years for this. It is not a matter of money. It is a matter of willpower. We need to get it done. I hope it gets done in my lifetime,” said Rowland Water District Director John Bellah. “I’m glad to hear the governor supports it. The approach that they’re taking is constant pressure, moving forward. Sites is willing to say

“It’s time to get Sites Reservoir built.”