Central Valley Project

The Central Valley Project (CVP) is a federal water management project in the U.S. state of California under the supervision of the United States Bureau of Reclamation. It was devised in 1933 in order to provide irrigation and municipal water to much of California's Central Valley—by regulating and storing water in reservoirs in the water-rich northern half of the state, and transporting it to the water-poor San Joaquin Valley and its surroundings by means of a series of canals, aqueducts and pump plants, some shared with the California State Water Project. Many CVP water users are represented by the Central Valley Project Water Association.

In addition to water storage and regulation, the system has a hydroelectric capacity of over 2,000 megawatts, provides recreation, and promotes flood control with its twenty dams and reservoirs. It has allowed major cities to grow along rivers in the Valley which previously would flood each spring, and transformed the semi-arid desert environment of the San Joaquin Valley into productive farmland. Freshwater stored in Sacramento River reservoirs and released downriver during dry periods prevents salt water from intruding into the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta during high tide. There are eight divisions of the project and ten corresponding units, many of which operate in conjunction, while others are independent of the rest of the network. California agriculture and related industries now directly account for 7% of the gross state product for which the CVP supplied water for about half.

Despite the benefits of the Project, many CVP operations have resulted in disastrous environmental and historical consequences. The salmon population in four major California rivers have declined as a result, and many natural river environments, such as riparian zones, meanders and sandbars no longer exist. Many archaeological and historic sites, as well as Native American tribal lands, now lie submerged under reservoirs for the CVP, which has received heavy criticism for promoting high-water-demand irrigated industrial farming that in turn has polluted rivers and groundwater. USBR has also been known to stretch the boundaries of many state and federal regulations in its operations of the CVP. The Central Valley Project Improvement Act, passed in 1992, intends to alleviate some of the problems associated with the CVP.

In recent years, a combination of drought and regulatory decisions passed based on the Endangered Species Act of 1973 have forced Reclamation to turn off much of the water for the west side of the San Joaquin Valley in order to protect the fragile ecosystem in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta and keep alive the dwindling fish populations of Central Valley rivers.