From The Mercury News– $4.5 billion Sites project would be eighth largest reservoir in California, with groundbreaking planned for 2026. Brown, a civil engineer who isn’t related to the former governor with the same name, is executive director of The Sites Project Authority, a group of government agencies in the Sacramento Valley that is planning to build the largest new reservoir in California since 1979, when the federal government built New Melones Lake in the Sierra Foothills west of Yosemite National Park. Sites Reservoir would be a $4.5 billion project, located in rural Colusa County, about 70 miles northeast of Sacramento. Plans call for it to be a vast off-stream reservoir that would take water from the Sacramento River in wet years, and store it for cities and farms in dry years. The 1.5 million-acre-foot reservoir would be California’s eighth largest, providing water to 24 million people and 500,000 acres of Central Valley farmlands. (more)