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River Watch
Auburn Dam Rears from the Deep
Environmentalists say heavy buying of land by speculators downstream is evidence that officials have already made up their mind to build the $932 million Auburn Dam on the American River. The dam - the first new dam in the Estuary watershed to near approval in years - is one of three optionsfor protecting Sacramento from floods presented by the Army Corps, the state Reclamation Board and the Sacramento Area Flood Control agency at a series of public meetings this September.
One option, the Folsom stepped-release plan, would hike levees and enlarge gates at the Folsom dam, create 209 acres of habitat on the Delta's Liberty Island, cost $528 million and reduce the risk of a big Sacramento flood from 26% to 13% over a 30-year period. A second $326 million option would simply modify the Folsom dam, cutting the flood risk to 15%. The Auburn dam option would cut the risk to 5% and be largely mitigated by the planting of 5000 acres of replacement habitat.
To the surprise of none, the Auburn dam, not the two other options, was the focus of furious controversy.
Environmentalists, who see the dam as the ruin of the river, dominated public meetings in Folsom and Auburn. But a Sacramento hearing had an equal number of dam supporters, including farmers interested in new water supplies and elderly people and property owners scared by the 1995 flood.
"Most individuals don't really understand the levee repair options, and they don't trust the levees," says Tab Berg, a publicity consultant for the flood control agency "They understand a dam and the security it brings.''
But dam opponents got a boost on September 29, when U.S. EPA wrote a letter saying the dam would cause irreparable loss of one of the few remaining conifer and hardwood canyon ecosystems in the lower Sierra.
Contact: Merritt Rice, Army Corps (916)557-6761
EBMUD May Tap American
Is EBMUD a step closer to exercising its rights to water from the American River, or will the district find itself on the road back to court? On September 12, East Bay Municipal Utility District directors voted 5-2 to authorize a project-level EIR for construction of a 15-mile, $112 million canal connecting the Folsom South Canal on the American River to the district's Mokelumne Aqueduct. The district is still exploring other options such as storage of water in San Joaquin County aquifers and a conjunctive use plan with Sacramento that would take water from below the confluence of the Sacramento and American rivers, near Freeport. But it's the vote to move ahead with the canal EIR that has alarmed Sacramento officials, who also covet American River water, and environmentalists such as the Sierra Club's David Nesmith, who says EBMUD is "in for another couple of decades of litigation" if it goes ahead. The district's Mary Selkirk, one of two "no" votes, put things in perspective. "People have been suing for thirty years to get water from the lower American, but nobody's gotten a drop yet," she says.
Contact: (510)835-3000
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