The peripheral canal has been on the backburner for decades, but a comment by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger last week in Bakersfield has the media buzzing. According to the California Progress Report, Schwarzenegger said, "We need more water. We need more storage. We need to build more storage, and we have to build conveyance, the canal, all of those kinds of things."
The 43-mile peripheral canal would channel Sierra Nevada runoff around the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta and into the California aqueduct. From there, it could be used for irrigation and to meet some of Southern California's water needs. The idea was killed by a statewide ballot measure in 1982 with 62.7 voters saying "no." Most of the measure's backers were in Southern California; those opposed in Northern California. The idea of a peripheral canal became history.
Even on the UC Water Resources Center Web site, the controversy over the peripheral canal gets mention only in an article about an oral history collection (see Page 8 of the Summer 2000 Currents newsletter.)
Resurrecting the peripheral canal means a renewed need for unbiased, science-based information about California's agricultural water needs and usage, a topic about which UC ANR has much expertise.