State Water Project

Having enough water has been a California obsession for nearly a century, pushing the state to build dams, reservoirs and canal systems. Massive quantities of water were shifted from one part of the state to another -- primarily from north to south. But you can't keep building dams forever; eventually you run out of good places to put them, which happened some time ago in California.

Last week, 126,000 gallons of crude oil spilled into a cove of Pyramid Lake, 60 miles northwest of Los Angeles along Interstate 5. Named for a nearby triangular rock carved by engineers building the old Highway 99, the lake is a popular recreational spot in the Angeles National Forest, but it also provides drinking water. Workers are now racing to clean up the spill. * Question: Where did the oil come from? Answer: A pipeline near the lake carries 2.

Environmental groups are rallying against a plan to cede some operations of the massive State Water Project to local water wholesalers as part of a broad restructuring of state government being considered by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. The governor is expected to signal next month his support, or rejection, of many of the 1,200 recommendations in a proposed top-to-bottom overhaul of the California bureaucracy.

California has the world's heavyweight champion of water systems. Its brawny parts range from Shasta and Trinity dams in the north to the Colorado River Aqueduct in the south, all of it tied together by the giant state and federal canals. Computerized operations can move water to almost any corner of the state.

Oxnard broke ground Tuesday on a $15-million water-treatment facility designed to help the city become less dependent on outside potable sources by cleaning up underground reserves. The groundwater desalter is the first phase of a larger municipal project that will include an advanced wastewater-treatment plant and restoration of the wetlands at Ormond Beach. More than 50 people, including Rep.

The Kern River, dry as bone, meets Interstate 5 on an expanse of land no longer tamed by agriculture. The last stand of cotton was plowed under a decade ago, and now tumbleweeds hide jackrabbits and coyotes. But cotton's white gold has given way to new riches stored deep below the ground. That's where 730,000 acre-feet of water -- a lake worth more than $180 million on the open market -- awaits the pump.

Racing to protect a reservoir that is a key link in Southern California's water supply, federal helicopter teams are dropping straw by the ton on slopes severely burned in October's catastrophic wildfires around Silverwood Lake in the San Bernardino Mountains. Officials want to stabilize the slopes before heavy winter rains, which could trigger large-scale erosion of ash, silt and potentially toxic compounds into the lake.

More water would flow to Los Angeles and San Diego under a plan that would alter the way Northern California water flows south through a vast system of state and federal pumps, aqueducts and reservoirs, officials said Friday. The draft proposal, negotiated last month over days of closed-door meetings in Napa, frees up additional water for the south by merging the operations of the State Water Project and the federal Central Valley Project.

Ever since the federal government proposed a $140-million settlement for a handful of families whose farms have been turned into a salt wasteland, the deal has been plagued by one question: Where would the money come from? California's two senators, along with 31 members of Congress representing every part of the state, are objecting to a plan that would fund the settlement by raiding several other water projects statewide. In a letter Wednesday to U.S. Atty. Gen.

Californians prize their environment, and they have been generous in providing bond funds to improve water quality, fix up long-neglected state parks, clean up beaches and develop urban park and recreation facilities. Voters are now being called on to pass Proposition 50, an initiative measure for the sale of $3.44 billion in general obligation bonds to continue badly needed water projects, protect watershed areas, purchase and restore wetlands such as Bolsa Chica in northern Orange County and finance local and regional projects.