Or is it empty? Anyway.. read and weep.
And here I am, still in love with the guy.
GOVERNOR SCHWARZENEGGER: First of all, I want to say thank you very much to all of you for being here. And I want to thank also Senator Perata for being here, who is a big believer in infrastructure and who was actually very, very helpful in 2006 and came to me many times in 2005 already, "Let's do the infrastructure, let's do the infrastructure." So he's a great partner and will be a great partner in the future. And then, of course, Secretary Dale Bonner, who is right here -- thank you very much for being here today and helping us organize this whole thing here and being a big believer in infrastructure. And of course David Crane, who is my old buddy, who has been really terrific and understands this whole thing.
I think it's great to have all of you here today. I'm thrilled that we are talking today all about infrastructure and what the needs are. And we are looking forward to hearing from every one of you what we can do to work together in order to create the infrastructure that we need. I don't think that we need to really sell you that we are very enthusiastic about infrastructure. I think that I made that clear when I ran in 2003, when I said we first have to rekindle the economy, bring the economy back, reform workers' compensation and then go and rebuild California and build California.
And I think that's exactly what we have done in 2006. In my State of the State Address I talked about, laid out the plan of our Strategic Growth Plan and the 69-plus billion dollar infrastructure package and challenged the legislators to go to work, Democrats and Republicans working together to find a way of putting it on the ballot that November, 2006 November. And the legislators worked together; months and months they negotiated. Even though people thought it was not going to happen, it did happen and the people then approved 42 billion dollars of infrastructure.
It was, of course, schools, it was transportation, mass transit, fixing our levees and affordable housing. But it was only, as I always said, it was the beginning, it was the foot in the door, because as I said in my last State of the State Address, we need really 500 billion dollars worth of infrastructure over the next 20 years; not immediately, but over the next 20 years.
Now, why we talk about the next 20 years is because some projects do take 15 to 20 years. When we talk about water -- above the ground, below the ground water storage, conveyance and fixing the Delta and all of those things -- it takes years and years and years. People have said that alone will take 15 to 20 years. Also some of the transportation projects, expanding our universities, building the schools that we need and so on, it will take years.
And I think it's also very important that we plan today for the increase in population, because the infrastructure we have in place now is for 18 million people. And we really have to plan; when we talk about 10 years from now, we'll have 45 million people. If you talk about 20 years from now, it could be even more than that, so that's why we have to plan way ahead.
We have, very fortunately, 29 billion dollars still that is not appropriated and money that can be pushed out. So this has great, great potential not only in rebuilding California, but also to create more jobs and to stimulate the economy, which is very important right now. So we are working on that.
But basically, we have also worked together, Democrats and Republicans, to do the second phase, which was two things that were not accomplished in 2006 and that was to really build for the prison population so we don't have to release people just because we are running out of space. And we were very successful to almost hit 9.7 billion dollars in lease revenue bonds. So, we are now working on that. I think the first prison space will become available, the first beds, end of this year, beginning of next year.
And we are right now working on water infrastructure, which is something that the Senator and I, we're going to do and Speaker Núñez and everyone is going to work together with the Republican leaders and we're going to make sure that we have water for the future, safe and reliable water. And as you know, this is something that is very current, because we hear so much now about how our water has drugs in it, so it's very important for us to really work on not only reliable water, but on safe water. And so that all will be part of that infrastructure package that we're working on again; storage, conveyance, fixing the Delta, safe and reliable water. Conservation is a very, very important part of this whole thing. So we're working on that.
But there are many more things that need to be done. We are very interested in public-private partnerships. We are very interested in looking at models, if it is British Columbia, or if it is Great Britain, where they have had great, great success. And I, as a matter of fact, want to go and take the legislative leaders on a trip to British Columbia or to Great Britain to see firsthand the great work that has been done there and to be able to ask all the questions that they have, because for us it's still a new thing here.
So with that, I just want to say that I'm very happy to have all of you here. And let's get going and go around the table and start talking about infrastructure and listen to all of you. Thank you very much
