Installations and Projects

The California Water and Energy in Orange County brings together papers, correspondence, reports, government documents, periodicals, newsletters, pamphlets, maps, photographs, and ephemera documenting water supply, distribution, conservation, and related energy development in Orange County and Southern California, chiefly during the twentieth century.

The largest portion of the collection concerns the Municipal Water District of Orange County and the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, and includes administrative papers, board and committee minutes, correspondence, financial and audit reports, public information and outreach materials, and extensive newspaper clippings. The collection also documents the Orange County Water District, the Orange County Flood Control District, the Irvine Ranch Water District, including correspondence of Joan Irvine Smith, and numerous smaller Orange County city and county water agencies. Statewide and national bodies are represented as well, among them the Association of California Water Agencies, the American Water Works Association, the Colorado River Association, the National Water Supply Improvement Association, and the United States Army Corps of Engineers.

Beyond agency records, the collection is organized to support research by geography, by project, and by subject. It contains materials arranged by California region and county, and documents major conveyance and supply projects that served the region, including the Diemer Intertie and Santiago Aqueduct project, the Colorado River Aqueduct, the State Water Project and California Aqueduct, the Owens Valley (Los Angeles) Aqueduct, the Central Valley Project, the Santa Ana Watershed, and the San Francisco Bay and San Joaquin Delta. Subject files cover hydrology and rainfall, water quality, reclamation and desalination, wastewater, pollution, supply and demand, drought and conservation, irrigation, reservoirs and dams, water rates, groundwater replenishment, flood and flood control, and energy sources such as nuclear, solar, geothermal, wind, and biomass. Educational and public outreach materials appear throughout, and oversize maps, aqueduct graphics, and construction plans are housed separately.