Mary Wells: Reservoir would help ease water crisis

When my family purchased our ranch 35 years ago in the small foothill community of Sites, we knew there were discussions to flood our land and make it a reservoir. Even so, we hoped we could continue to ranch here for generations to come. 

We could not predict back then that California would grow so fast and our state’s needs would be so great that a reservoir would become an essential part of solving California’s current water crisis.

It would be sad to see our land and our neighbors land flooded, but I understand that every Californian would benefit in some way from storing this water.

For years, California’s leaders talked about solving our state’s water crisis. In drought years they focused on this issue, but public attention faded with the next rainfall.

That short-term thinking has created a long-term problem for everyone.

As the great, great-granddaughter of W.H. Williams, the founder of a small town in western Colusa County in the mid-1800s, and being a grandmother, I think about the past but most importantly about the future.

My children and grandchildren sit on tractors and harvesters and on horseback in Northern California, managing our lands. I want their lives to be as good as they are now, where we maintain our roots to the land that sustains us all while protecting California’s environment.  This requires unprecedented commitment to resolve our state’s water crisis.

Over many years, people have assumed conserving water would solve our crisis.  While helpful, conservation alone cannot provide for the future of a growing population.  

As a state, we have done little for decades to expand the amount of water we can store in wet and normal years and to ensure we have water available in drought years to meet the needs of citizens, business, agriculture and fish and wildlife.

A partial solution to our problem lies in rural Colusa County, where a natural bowl formation in the hills on the west side of the Sacramento Valley provides what the Department of Water Resources calls the best alternative for increased water storage for California.

Known as the “Sites Reservoir” because the small community bears the name of its earliest landowner, John Lee Sites, some 2 million acre-feet of water – that is 652 billion gallons – could be stored. This offers the most cost-effective and environmentally sound alternative to provide water so that we don’t experience shortages each and every year.

With this reservoir, excess water that flows down the Sacramento River, sometimes causing serious winter and spring flooding before heading to the Pacific Ocean, could instead be stored and available when we really need it.

The water could be used to maintain water flow in our rivers during drought years, water that is critical for both fish and river habitats. The citizens of this state decided to place great value upon protecting our environment for future generations. This water storage supports that effort.

The water also would be available to meet the state’s contractual obligation to provide water to farming families throughout California, and to protect jobs and the economies of many rural communities. This is especially important for permanent crops, such as orchards and vineyards, where even one year without water is devastating.

The water needs of our state’s growing population must be addressed without sacrificing agriculture or the environment. Water diverted to farms is only partially used to grow crops.  Much of it flows back into our streams and rivers to be used over and over again by more farms, cities, wildlife refuges and our bay-delta ecosystem. 

I cherish my ranch and my home in Sites with all the memories that go with it. For me, the time has come to use our land in a different way. We need Sites Reservoir to help solve California’s water crisis.

Californians need to understand and embrace water storage as part of their future. This requires thinking and acting beyond the kitchen faucet that provided water this morning. We must work together to ensure that future generations have the water they need at their faucets, on their farms and in their environment.

Mary Wells, 62, is a fifth-generation Californian who owns ranchland in the proposed Sites Reservoir area.