As we enter a period—unless rainfall returns to normal or better later this year (fingers crossed)—of continued dryness, the options for water storage that are still out there might need another look, and here is one from a Sacramento Bee article from 2004 about raising Shasta Dam that is very interesting.
Concrete solution for water?
Raising Shasta Dam's height looms large among ideas to boost state's dwindling storage.
By David Whitney -- Bee Washington Bureau
Published 2:15 am PST Monday, November 22, 2004
REDDING - From Highway 151, Shasta Dam emerges through the fog and rain like an awesome apparition, a giant wall of concrete whose power generators humming eerily far below add to its supernatural dimension.
As California looks for new ways to increase water supplies in the face of mounting shortages, this monstrous 602-foot facade holding back the Sacramento River seems destined to grow even taller.
It's a perfect spot for expansion, although it's not the only site under intense scrutiny in this scramble for new water storage.
Shasta Dam was designed to be 800 feet tall, so adding concrete to its top presents no significant engineering obstacles.
"This is like adding a room on a house, rather than building a new house," said Michael J. Ryan, the Bureau of Reclamation's Northern California area manager, whose small office overlooks the dam, the lake and, on a clear day, Mount Shasta looming large in the distance.
But most importantly, the clean, cold water it would add to the state's supply is exactly what water managers are looking for. A taller dam means additional downstream protection against floods, more downstream supply for farms and cities and, because Shasta Lake would be deeper, more cold water to send downriver when the salmon are looking for a place to spawn.
A recently enacted federal water bill governing the state-federal San Francisco Bay-Delta restoration and water program commonly known as Cal-Fed revs up studies to add as much as 18.5 feet of concrete to the top of the dam. That would boost the size of the lake behind by some 15 percent, or 636,000 acre-feet - enough water for 1.2 million households.
At an estimated cost of nearly $500 million, the project would be relatively cheap. Under the Bureau of Reclamation's current timetable, construction could be under way in five years and completed in 10.
All that looks promising for Northern and Central California, where water shortages in a normal year are expected to be 1.4 million acre-feet by 2020 - and three times that in a drought year…
…From an engineering standpoint, it's a piece of cake. The dam, built between 1938 and 1945, was originally planned to be 200 feet taller. At 800 feet, it would have been the highest and biggest in the world.
Sheri Harral, public affairs officer at the dam, said World War II and materials shortages associated with the war effort led to a decision to stop construction at 602 feet.
"The thinking was to come back and add on to it if ever there was a need to," Harral said. "They started looking at raising it in 1978."
If Shasta Dam had been built up to its engineering limit in 1945, it is arguable that Northern and Central California would not be facing a critical water shortage now.
According to a 1999 Bureau of Reclamation study, a dam 200 feet taller would be able to triple storage to 13.89 million acre-feet of water.
Still, tripling the size of Shasta Lake, on paper at least, would store nine times the projected 2020 water deficit for the Sacramento, San Joaquin and Tulare Lake basins during normal water years.
