Opinion: When is the multibillion-dollar Sites Reservoir project not worth it?
Summers that follow wet winters usually bring high hopes for big water infrastructure projects to capture it all, and this year is no exception. Gov. Gavin Newsom has fast-tracked Sites Reservoir, lauding the proposed project northwest of Sacramento as a panacea for a California that still remembers the challenges of an extreme drought. But big water storage and conveyance projects such as Sites and the Delta tunnel, another massive boondoggle, pose huge environmental and financial risks. These are old ideas that claim to respond to climate change when in fact they destroy intact ecosystems and wildlife habitats.
—Written by Sofia Prado-Irwin, staff scientist at the Center for Biological Diversity.