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Land subsidence, in particular, is posing significant threats to water infrastructure in the Central Valley, which is sinking faster than any other part of the state.
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The problems also aren’t unique to Southern California. Only a few days after the MWD is slated to lay the final piece of earthquake-resistant pipe at Casa Loma, the agency will be shutting down another segment of its Colorado River pipeline to conduct an emergency leak repair. “With climate change, they just haven’t been getting the precipitation out here to replenish the groundwater basin, so they keep pumping and we need to respond to that,” he said.īut it’s far from the only place vulnerable to such issues. MWD’s chief engineer John Bednarski noted that the Riverside County area surrounding the Casa Loma siphon is home to many dairies and agricultural facilities, which tend to have deep wells. In California, subsidence is often attributed to overpumping of the state’s groundwater - the water that sits beneath the Earth’s surface - because too much pumping can make the ground sink and buckle.
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What’s more, an 800-foot portion of the pipeline has experienced more than five feet of vertical displacement over 84 years due to ongoing “nonseismic settlement” of the ground surface in a process known as subsidence. Without it, the nearly 100-year-old segment of the critical aqueduct could be displaced by as much as 13 feet due to seismic activity, they said. Officials said it was a significant step in securing the state’s water future. The MWD retrofitting is part of a $37-million project to ensure the siphon - which crosses the Casa Loma fault line - is safe from deformation or even a potential rupture in the event of an earthquake.
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The upgrade is just the latest instance of state and federal water managers struggling to maintain a complex and aging water conveyance system that is not only beset by drought, but also challenged by sagging canals, leaking pipes and the looming threat of wildfires and earthquakes. Recently, officials from the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California celebrated as crews lowered a section of earthquake-resistant pipeline into a portion of the Colorado River Aqueduct - the 242-mile system of pumps, tunnels, pipelines and open canals that carry water from Lake Havasu to Southern California. As drought, global warming and chronic overuse push the Colorado River to perilous new lows, water officials are hoping to prevent an earthquake from severing a critical Depression-era aqueduct that now connects millions of Southern Californians to the shrinking river.