Faucet Flows and Flows

Californians are constantly told that the state Water Project is far from completed as envisioned when voters approved the massive water-transfer program back in 1960. True, but this does not mean that work on the project has come to a halt. Construction has been completed just this month on the $97.7-million, 24-mile-long North Bay Aqueduct that will carry water from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta to growing areas of Solano and Napa counties.

Compared to the ultimate design capacity of the project, 4.2 million acre-feet of water delivered annually, the North Bay allocation is relatively small--a maximum of 67,000 acre-feet a year. But officials in developing cities like Vallejo say that they would not be able to continue to grow without the new supplies. The state project has been delivering considerably larger amounts of water to Alameda and Santa Clara counties via the South Bay Aqueduct since the late 1960s. Planning studies are under way for a Coastal Aqueduct serving Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo counties.

Southern California always will be the major customer--and financial base--for the state Water Project, but the program increasingly benefits Northern California as well. And increasingly the north and south find that their water destinies often are linked to the same plumbing.