An act relating to the San Luis and Delta-Mendota Water Authority, and making an appropriation therefor.
AB 707 would appropriate $455.5 million from the General Fund to the San Luis and Delta-Mendota Water Authority to pay for State Highway Route 152 improvements needed to complete the B.F. Sisk Dam Raise and Reservoir Expansion Project. The bill frames the project as part of California’s broader response to drought, climate change, and water-supply reliability, citing the human right to water, the need for additional storage, and the role of the San Luis Reservoir in serving agricultural, municipal, industrial, and refuge water uses.
According to the bill’s findings, the B.F. Sisk Dam Raise and Reservoir Expansion Project would raise the reservoir by 10 feet and increase storage capacity by 130,000 acre-feet, with the potential to supply nearly 400,000 homes annually. The bill also emphasizes that roughly half of the project’s costs are tied to Highway 152 improvements, which it characterizes as a statewide public safety benefit that should be funded by the state rather than by water users, in order to keep water affordability from being burdened by transportation-related costs.
If enacted, AB 707 would create a direct General Fund appropriation to the San Luis and Delta-Mendota Water Authority for highway improvements associated with the dam and reservoir project. It would not broadly rewrite water law, but it would affect state budgeting and infrastructure financing by shifting a large share of the project’s transportation-related costs to the state. The measure would support completion of a major water-storage and dam-safety project tied to the Central Valley Project and State Water Project, with downstream effects for water deliveries to farms, cities, industrial users, and disadvantaged communities in the San Joaquin Valley.
The bill’s findings reflect strong support for the project, describing it as widely backed at the federal, state, and local levels and consistent with California’s water-resilience strategy. The overall tone is affirmative and urgency-driven, emphasizing climate adaptation, drought preparedness, public safety, and affordability. There is no recorded committee debate or vote history in the provided materials, and the bill died at desk on introduction, so there is no evidence of formal legislative support or opposition beyond the bill text itself.
The main point of contention is fiscal: AB 707 proposes using $455.5 million in General Fund money for Highway 152 improvements that are linked to, but not identical with, the reservoir expansion project. Supporters’ rationale is that the highway work provides a statewide public safety benefit and should therefore be publicly funded, while the bill’s structure implies a policy choice to relieve water users of those costs. Potential critics could question whether the state should subsidize a project whose benefits are shared among water contractors, agricultural interests, and transportation users, but no explicit opposition is documented in the available record.