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$4.3-billion water retrofit is ready to get underway

Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on November 20, 2008 at 5:55 am

From the Milpitas Post:

MILPITAS residents might not have noticed but a week ago two San Francisco boards gave their final decisions in two areas which now permit the huge seismic rebuilding of virtually the entire San Francisco water system. Targeted completion date is 2014 construction will take that long. And the costs of paying for the $4.3 billion will have to be shared by Milpitas and its fellow water users in 27 other cities and special districts throughout the Bay Area.

Final decision on how and when to begin collecting for the huge project have been deferred by the city council here after major protests deluged city hall. But it is likely that the newly elected council (which will only have one new member) will have to come to grips with that deferral in the coming year.

Two Oct. 30 actions in San Francisco saw that city’s planning commission approve the final environmental impact report for the set of 37 construction projects along the 170 miles of pipelines, dams, power plants and the like. The same day, the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission that runs the water system from Yosemite National Park down to the users, wrestled with a knotty dilemma of keeping adequate flow for the rapidly diminishing Tuolumne River salmon. That decision limits the needed growth in the supply for the next 10 years.