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Placer County Sells 6 Billion Gallons Of Water To East Bay During Drought

PLACER COUNTY (CBS13) — The Placer County Water Agency plans to send more than 6 billion gallons of water to the East Bay as it tells its customers to prepare to save water during California's drought.

With a mandatory cut in water usage for PCWA customers, we wanted to get answers as to why the agency would allow those billions of gallons to be sold.

Andy Fecko says the water being sold to the East Bay comes from the Middle Fork Project, a reservoir in Auburn that still isn't able to get water to many customers.

"While we work out those infrastructure issues, we can't get all that water that we have stored in our reservoirs to our customers, so on our system, there truly is a surplus," he said. "We always maintain safe storage levels to serve Placer County residents."

He says the water will go from Auburn to Folsom Reservoir, where it will help the salmon population. That water will be pumped out in Sacramento and head to the East Bay.

PCWA will get $1.5 million in the deal, and says what it does with the funds is at the discretion of the board.

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