San Vicente Dam was originally constucted in 1943. In 2016, a project to raise the dam by 117 feet was completed as part of the San Diego County Water Authority’s Emergency and Carryover Storage Project. San Vicente is a deep, steep-sided impounding reservoir on San Vicente Creek, approximately 25 miles northeast of San Diego. It currently has a depth of 306 feet when full. It is the largest of the CIty’s reservoirs.

The San Diego County Water Authority oversaw the construction of the San Vicente Dam Raise Project, which began in early 2009. The San Vicente Dam Raise Project is part of the Water Authority’s more than $1 billion Emergency Storage Project, which is creating new emergency water storage and pipeline connections to deliver water throughout the region if our imported water supply is disrupted. Now complete, the reservoir is able to store an additional 152,000 acre-feet of water supply.

The reservoir is formed by impounding the waters of San Vicente Creek, and the Colorado River via the First San Diego Aqueduct branch of the Colorado River Aqueduct from Lake Havasu.[2] It is the largest reservoir in the city of San Diego, with a storage capacity of 249,358.0 AF (https://www.sandiego.gov/water/recreation/levels)

In 2009, construction began of a $568 million project to increase the size of San Vicente Reservoir twofold. San Diego County Water Authority officials are hoping to receive funding from Proposition 18 (the $11.1 billion bond to upgrade the Californian water supply), but will continue the upgrade without these funds if the Proposition is unsuccessful.

The raising of the dam more than doubled the reservoir’s past capacity of 145,200,000 cu yd (111,000,000 m3) by increasing it 245,226,666 cu yd (187,489,239 m3) to a total of 390,426,666 cu yd (298,502,604 m3).[3] The reservoir is a popular place for fishing, boating, waterskiing and wakeboarding.