I just finished a two-day Colorado River Aqueduct Facilities Inspection Tour hosted by the San Diego County Water Authority and sponsored by the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California (many thanks to SDCWA’s Scott Robinson for inviting me!). I went on this tour to get a closer look at the infrastructure that contributes a large amount of water that San Diego needs to import to stay alive.

San Diego imports about 90% of its water and a good deal of that comes from the Colorado River. It’s one thing to casually acknowledge our dependence on the river, but there’s nothing like getting a close look at some of the engineering that goes into maintaining this immense system.

Stops along the way included San Vicente Reservoir, Twin Oaks Valley Water Treatment Plant, Diamond Valley Lake, Copper Basin, the Whitsett Intake Pumping Plant, Parker Dam, the All-American Canal and Palo Verde Irrigation District farmlands.

On to the pictures (clickable for enlargements).

We began the tour at San Vicente Dam, where a project to raise the dam by 117 feet using a roller-compacted concrete technique is underway. When the dam raise is completed, the dam’s capacity will increase from 90,000 to 242,000 acre-feet.

I took this shot a few months ago, when they were water blasting the dam's face to prepare the surface

Surface is all clean now, ready for new concrete. The scraped rock on the right side shows how much higher the dam will be.

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