Contract for $6 billion Sites Reservoir advances amid protest, labor concerns
For decades Sacramento Valley farmers and water agencies throughout California have championed the need for another reservoir to bolster the state’s water supply.
But deciding who should build it, as of late, has become more controversial, complicated by pushback from local labor unions.
The crowded room where officials gathered to make that decision Friday morning was greeted by more than 100 protesters. Wearing neon vests, work boots and sunglasses, the laborers assembled outside the nondescript building in Maxwell, a small town in Northern California’s Colusa County about 10 miles east of the valley where construction will begin on Sites Reservoir, which is estimated to cost more than $6 billion.
Protest chants, claps and accompanying sounds drowned out about 20 minutes of the meeting before organizers quieted the crowd, and the topic shifted to the question of most concern: Who should officials choose for a contract whose scope may eclipse $3 billion of construction over the next several years?
Surrounded by protesters, the Sites Project Authority board and Reservoir Committee members voted to finalize a contract with Barnard Construction Company to build dams, roads and bridges for the reservoir expected to hold 1.5 million acre feet of water for residents throughout the state.
“Every month we waste is 20-more-million dollars to the price of the project,” said Sites Authority board member Jeff Sutton, of the Glenn-Colusa Irrigation District. “... We’ve got to get going because the next drought is coming.”
The decision to work with Barnard Construction came amid backlash from several local labor unions that have questioned the Montana-based company’s bona fides to handle a project the scale of Sites Reservoir, including who the company would hire to build it.
“They’re claiming that they want us involved,” said John Belperio, a Nor Cal Carpenters Union district manager, during the protest.
He pointed to the crowd of laborers behind him.
“They just didn’t want this,” he said.
Planned on the Glenn-Colusa county line, the reservoir would pump excess water, particularly during and after storms, from the Sacramento River, diverting flows into the miles-wide valley that would serve local water districts and some as far away as Southern California.
Although the full scope of the first major contract has been estimated around $3 billion, officials will amend and price services as the project advances, said JP Robinette, Sites Project engineering and construction manager.
The board also approved a $1 million payment to the company for preconstruction work throughout this year, as it hopes to break ground by the end of the year.
Officials now expect to complete the reservoir by 2033.
Union concerns
The Nor Cal Carpenters Union, in a letter to the Sites Project Authority, detailed its concerns about who was chosen as the construction manager at risk overseeing a significant amount of the $6 billion-plus project.
“We don’t think Barnard has the capacity nor the experience to deliver a project like this for Californians,” Belperio said in an interview.
Union protesters claim that the company lacks experience with projects the scale of Sites Reservoir and that the Nor Cal Carpenters Union — which includes a number of carpentry, piledriving and millwright trades — and other labor groups have not been involved in labor negotiations.
“There are thousands of workers on this project,” Belperio said. “They’re gonna have no job once they leave. Where(as) if you use some of the local contractors, they always take their workers to the next job, and the next job. These are their careers.”
Emilio Aldana, business manager for Plasterers and Cement Masons Local 300, said his union would prefer a contractor established in California, more likely to look for future projects in the state that could go to union workers.
“When they pack up and go, so do those jobs,” he said.
Union members argued that the complexity of building reservoirs and dams in California warranted board members choosing a company with more experience with such projects in the state to build Sites Reservoir.
The last project Barnard Construction completed in California was the Los Vaqueros Dam expansion in Contra Costa County in 2012. Union members questioned the company’s handling of a multi-billion-dollar project in Canada several years ago, the Keeyask Generation Project, saying it was behind schedule and over budget. Barnard Construction executives said the union’s characterization of that project was misleading.
Not all north state work groups opposed the board’s decision.
Some members of the State Building and Construction Trades Council of California, which has agreed to work with Barnard Construction on the project, voiced support for the company and its intention to hire local workers.
“We’re going to need everybody,” Mike Fuller, a Barnard Construction executive, told board members.
Explaining their choice
Barnard Construction rose as the preferred choice among three bidders based on an evaluation that ranked the Montana company ahead of two others, Kiewit Corporation and Flatiron-Dragados-Obayashi, which labor organizers argued have more recent experience overseeing California infrastructure projects and working with unions.
The company addressed the labor and quality concerns raised by the union in a letter to Sites Authority officials earlier this month.
Fuller, in the letter, noted the company’s agreement with the State Building and Construction Trades Council of California to work on the project, and said the company has been in communication with the Nor Cal Carpenters Union about involving them with the project.
Officials and the company have agreed to a policy that would hire at least 20% of its labor from Colusa, Glenn and Yolo counties, and 50% of its labor from seven others nearby, including Sacramento County.
Robert Kunde, a reservoir committee member, said that the stakeholders have all expressed their intention to hire local workers for the project, and that the board has outs if the workforce conditions it has outlined are not met.
“The contract has termination clauses in it, and those termination clauses are pretty broad,” he said.
The scope of Sites Reservoir
The once-dreamed-of oasis for Sacramento Valley farmers where no river runs through has evolved in its purpose and conception through its years of planning.
Plotted for a desolate stretch of foothills about 65 miles northwest of Sacramento, the reservoir will store up to 1.5 million acre-feet of water for the north state, but also communities outside the valley, including the Bay Area and Southern California.
The scale of the project marks the largest reservoir built in California since the 1970s. A combination of funding sources have percolated throughout the years to meet the rising cost, with financing coming from water districts throughout the state, along with state and federal dollars.
Designed for a valley miles away from the Sacramento River, the reservoir would pump water through an underground pipe connecting to the river, rather than damming and trapping its water supply.
What’s next?
Officials selected Barnard Construction for the first significant phase of construction, but the full extent of the cost and where the funds to pay for it come from will be determined in the coming years.
The union concerns may ripple beyond the Sites Project Authority charged with managing funds and orchestrating construction for what would become, at current estimates, the eighth-largest reservoir in California.
Proposition 1, which voters passed in 2014, has raised billions administered by the California Water Commission to pay for water infrastructure, of which the Sites Reservoir is currently eligible for about $1.1 billion, officials said.
Sites Authority officials are scheduled next week to update the state water commission on the status of its reservoir project, including the construction contract approved Friday.
This story was originally published January 16, 2026 at 5:07 PM.
