Reclamation District (RD) 2035 awarded MWH Global a $5.15 million contract to provide construction management and engineering services during construction (CM-ESDC) by for the $44 million Joint Intake and Fish Screen Project.
RD 2035 diverts water from the Sacramento River to irrigate about 15,000 acres of crops, and the existing intake is more than 100 years old, and is the largest unscreened facility on the Sacramento River, north of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, California. Using the Central Valley Project Restoration Fund, the Department of the Interior, Bureau of Reclamation (Reclamation) is providing more than $16 million in construction grant funding to construct a new, state-of-the-art fish screen.
The facility will draw water in from the Sacramento River through perforated metal screens, which will ensure that offspring of migrating salmon, steelhead and other fish species will not be injured as they pass by the structure. Large pumps located inside the screens will pressurize water, thus enabling it to travel through a pipeline to a regional water treatment facility. A separate set of pumps will provide pressurized water to scour the floor of the intake facility to help remove settled silt and sand normally present in the river.
The intake facility will be capable of moving up to 400 cu ft per second (cfs) of river water, enough to fill an Olympic size swimming pool in three and a half minutes. This 400-cfs intake is a result of partnership between RD 2035 and the cities of the Woodland and Davis (collectively represented by the Woodland Davis Clean Water Agency) to combine their intake facility needs to reduce the overall impacts on endangered fishery species, provide reliable water supply for existing agricultural activities and enable supplemental water supply to urban areas to address water supply reliability and potential health concerns from extensive use of groundwater.
MWH responsibilities for the project have included feasibility level analyses, preliminary and final designs, environmental and permitting.
The dual-purpose intake will provide environmental benefits, water quality benefits and improve water supply reliability in the region and is consistent with the ecosystem restoration goals of the CVPIA and the CALFED Bay-Delta Program. In addition to Reclamation’s grant, the joint project is also funded by the State of California (Proposition 40 Funds).
Construction of the 400-cfs intake and pump station and appurtenant facilities is expected to be completed by 2017.
Source: MWH Global
