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LAKESIDE — Work is under way today to raise the 220-foot-tall San Vicente Dam in Lakeside by 117 feet, a project that San Diego County Water Authority officials said would improve water reliability in the region.

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“Raising San Vicente Dam will provide the biggest increase in regional water storage in San Diego County history,” said Claude “Bud” Lewis, chair of the SDCWA board. “When complete, it will greatly expand our capacity for holding emergency water supplies, as well as water storage for use during times of limited supply, like we are experiencing now,” he said.

California Secretary for Natural Resources Mike Chrisman joined local officials at the San Vicente Dam today to commemorate the start of construction. The $568 million project, touted as the tallest dam-raising project in the world using roller-compacted concrete, will take more than three years to complete, according to the SDCWA.

Once finished, it will provide an additional 152,000-acre-feet of water storage, more than doubling the reservoir’s current capacity. The dam raise is the final component of the SDCWA’s $1.5 billion Emergency Storage Project, an effort that has been under way for more than a decade to create a system of reservoirs, pipelines and other facilities to store and move water around the county in the event of a disaster.

The project is expected to be completed by late 2012, according to the SDCWA.