Stop the Urban Southern California Water Grab from Nevada County!

July 22, 2010

Remember the movie Chinatown?  This situation is a déjà vu!  A collection of Southern California urban communities are the primary funding source for a study to build an enormous dam on the Bear River, through an act of eminent domain, that will flood historic ranches, Native American archeological sites and permanently protected conservation lands.  It will rob this community of any future growth potential by earmarking this water for only Southern California communities.  Is this fair?

The South Sutter Water District proposes to construct a $500 million dollar facility to impound a pool which will contain up to 345,000 acre feet of water. That would be almost five times the capacity of Rollins Lake. The dam will completely annihilate the Bear River ecosystem forever. 

This proposal is being pushed through without any consideration of the community that will suffer as a result.  What’s worse, it’s being done in secrecy. “But our focus isn’t on the impacts,” Steve Brown, a consultant with RMC Water and Environment hired by South Sutter Water District to speak on their behalf told the Union newspaper on June 9.  “We’re looking at the broad scope from a cost-benefit perspective.” And whose broad-scope cost-benefit is he concerned about? 

Nevada County Land Trust (now Bear Yuba Land Trust) presently has conservation interests in more than 2,100 acres of grazing land owned by three separate ranching families which will be directly affected by the dam. An even larger area of land, more than 3,600 acres is conserved or proposed for conservation in Placer County on the south side of the river.

The Garden Bar area is a beautiful plant community of blue oak-grey pine woodland. This creates a mix of hardwoods, conifers, and an understory of shrubs that are interspersed with patches of annual grassland. This biologically diverse niche provides breeding habitats for a diverse group of amphibians, reptiles, birds, and mammals.

This land has played an important role in human history since the area was inhabited by groups of Maidu who established a village at the confluence of Little Wolf Creek and the Bear. Later, Garden Bar was the last crossing of the Bear for the Emigrant Trail prior to its terminus at the Johnson Ranch in Wheatland. The property continued to  play a significant role in the Gold Rush and the farming period which followed. Land in the area has been the home of some of the oldest pioneer families in Nevada County.
   
Today, it continues as a vibrant ranching area supporting a large cattle grazing population. It provides recreational opportunity for hunting, fishing, hiking, mountain biking and horseback riding for both residents and visitors.

The dam is designed to be part of a “pumped storage hydroelectric system” along with Camp Far West Reservoir. At peak electric hours, it would be drained to generate electricity. At times of lower demand and electric rates, it will berefilled. This water fluctuation will preclude recreational use of the reservoir. Nor is this a great new clean energy source for California. It is estimated that the pumping of the water back uphill consumes 40% more energy than is generated by the hydroelectric drop. The energy to pump the water uphill will be generated primarily by coal-fired electric plants.

South Sutter Water District is a small district primarily serving a rice farming area. They need access to inexpensive water. The water from the Garden Bar Dam will be among the most expensive in the state – the equivalent in cost to desalinated water from a nuclear plant. South Sutter therefore must sell the water in hopes to be able to purchase other water at a rate that its users can afford. South Sutter has put together a consortium of urban water agencies to pay for the initial due diligence. It has raised $1,000,000 from five agencies- The City of Napa Public Works Department, City of American Canyon Water Department, Castaic Lake Water Agency, City of San Bernardino Water District and the Palmdale Water District. Almost 85% of the cost was advanced by the three Southern California Districts.

The idea of a Garden Bar Dam has been around since the 1940’s but has come and gone primarily because the flows are not sufficient to justify the expenditure –unless the community can afford very expensive water. Transferable water rights could allow for this dam to be approved.  This means the water can be “deposited’ here in Northern California and “withdrawn” in Southern California – it’s not the same water, just a water credit.  This is not dissimilar to the way in which we use our ATM cards.

The Land Trust does not oppose sensible water storage facilities as they are the life blood of our agricultural community. We do oppose projects which are designed to transfer our water from rural communities to urban communities, especially where such projects take conserved lands supporting a rural way of life to build more suburbs elsewhere in the state.

Please join us in this protest now before it becomes too expensive and too politically hot to stop.  And yes, it can happen.