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WILLIAM R. GIANELLI Water is already being delivered to users in Plumas, Alameda, and Santa Clara Counties in the northern part of the State. Three dams and reservoirs, largely for recreational use - - - Frenchman, Ant- elope and Grizzly VaHey dams - - - have been completed. Plumas County receives its water from Frenchman and Grizzly reservoirs. Alameda and Santa Clata Counties deliveries come from the South Bay Aqueduct, a 44-mile-Iong branch from the Delta. Work also has begun on the 28-mile North Bay Aqueduct to Solano and Napa Counties, with some water 'deliveries due next year and the major por- tion about 1980. A 100-mile Coastal Branch from the main line of the California Aqueduct, starting from the boundary line of Kings and Kern Counties and proceeding to a terminus near the Santa Maria River, also is on schedule with the first IS miles operable next, year. Water deliveries to the more distant points in San Luis Obispo and Santa Barbara Counties through Devil's Den Pumping Plant are not scheduled to begin until about 1980. Now let us return to big Oroville Dam, 770 feet high, which required 80 million cubic yards of earth and rock - - - enough to fill I Y2 million standard railroad cars - - - for the embankment. For- ty-four feet higher than Hoover Dam, it is the highest dam of any kind in the United States. It was constructed under a $120.8 million contract - - - the largest nondefense construction contract ever awarded competitively in the United States. Its two powerplants, one underneath the dam and the other downstream at Thermalito, will have a total dependable capacity of 725,000 kilo- watts. Total estimated cost of the Oroville facilities is $460 million. The Federal Government con- tracted to pay 22 percent of the construction costs, excluding power facilities, as its contribution to flood control. The embankment was topped out on October 6. On November 14 the Department sealed Div- ersion Tunnel No. I and began storing water behind the dam. San Luis Dam, the huge storage reservoir near Los!Banos in the San Joaquin Valley, is a splen- did example of joint state-federal effort. Facilities to be used by the State Water Project and the Fed- eral Central VaHey Project include 104 miles of the Calif~rnia Aqueduct from the dam to Kettleman City; the San Luis Pumping-Generating Plant, O'Neill Forebay and Dos Amigos Pumping Plant. When water entering O'Neill Forebay exceeds service area dema,nds, the excess will be pumped to San Luis reservoir. Now, an additional word on the Tehachapi Pumping Plant - - - the "Big Lift" of the State Water Project. The plant presented the project builders with a ;tremendous challenge in the technology of pump design and manufacture. Never before has so mU9h water been pumped so high. The highest lift now operating in the United States is less than I ,000 Jeet; in Europe some pumping plants higher than Tehachapi have been operating, but with much smaller volumes of flow. Therefore, the Department turned to the Alpine regions of Europe in its search for precedent and experience. The skills of consultants were utilized in' an extensive research program, which com- bined the art of European designers experienced in this work and the manufacturing ability and pro- duction capabilities of American companies. After evaluating the results, the Department of ~ater Resources decided on a single lift at the Tehachapi Mountains, utilizing the four-stage pump for waximum efficiency. Work is proceeding in accordance with this decision, and we believe that we will have the best possible machinery which human intelligence can produce for the "Big Lift". One of the most remarkable concepts of the State Water Project, it seems to me, is that of the -30-