History
The original purpose of the project was to provide water for arid Southern California, whose local water resources were insufficient to sustain the region's growth. Construction began in the late 1950s, with major funding approved in a 1960 bond measure. The vote on the bond split along North-South lines, as Northern Californians opposed the measure as a boondoggle and an attempt to steal their water resources. Most of the water (roughly 80%) carried by the project is used for agriculture, primarily in the San Joaquin Valley, since pumping the water over the Tehachapi Mountains is costly and Southern California has other sources of water such as the Owens River, tributary creeks to Mono Lake and the Colorado River.
Read more about this topic: California State Water Project
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“The disadvantage of men not knowing the past is that they do not know the present. History is a hill or high point of vantage, from which alone men see the town in which they live or the age in which they are living.”
—Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874–1936)
“History, as an entirety, could only exist in the eyes of an observer outside it and outside the world. History only exists, in the final analysis, for God.”
—Albert Camus (1913–1960)
“While the Republic has already acquired a history world-wide, America is still unsettled and unexplored. Like the English in New Holland, we live only on the shores of a continent even yet, and hardly know where the rivers come from which float our navy.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)