Republican Congressman Doug LaMalfa and a Democratic colleague are continuing their campaign to get more water storage for California. LaMalfa and representative John Garamedi co-sponsored a house resolution in march that would accelerate the federal review process and get construction underway on the Sites Reservoir in Colusa and Glenn Counties. The bill also would allow the federal government to help with construction of what would ultimately be a state facility. The bill was introduced but has not yet made it to the floor of the House. To help the push the project forward on the state government side of things, LaMalfa and Garamendi have sent a letter to the California Water Commission urging them to tap the funds available under State Proposition 1, the water bond initiative approved by voters. Unbridled flooding this spring followed 5 years of drought, with the problem compounded by the Oroville Dam spillway failure. That combination of factors has resulted in more agreement that the state desperately needs a way to capture more storm water on the west side of the valley to save for the dry season. The bipartisan consensus in Northern California is that the most cost efficient and environmentally friendly way to do that is with Sites Reservoir. When completed, sites would have a storage capacity of about 1.8 million acre-feet of water. Lake Shasta is the largest reservoir in the state, with about 4.5 million acre-feet when it’s full. An acre-foot is the equivalent of one acre of water one foot deep.