The All-Outdoors Whitewater Rafting California River Blog

Last year, Doolittle decided to use (ahem…waste..ahem) 1 billion taxpayer dollars for yet another study on the proposed Auburn Dam. A dam which, if built, would drown miles of the Middle and North Forks of the American River. And for the purpose of what? Water rights that don’t exist? Power that can be achieved at a much lower cost? And of course, the supposedly needed extra flood protection which isn’t worth a darn without improvements to Folsom first anyway, and which would protect against an amount of water not likely to ever be produced by the American River (For more background information please read previous posts about the Auburn Dam, or visit www.auburndamwatch.org.) For those of us who have seen through all this faulty reasoning for some time now and have viewed the proposal as both a waste of money and a waste of two invaluable river canyons, the results of Doolittle’s cost study are sweet redemption. The dam has been estimated to cost between six and ten times the original amount that is often cited by dam supporters, ringing in at an outrageous 6 to 10 billion dollars. As a mature and fiscally responsible citizen, a fan of sensical government planning and a steward of California’s beautiful river canyons, I have only this to say about the estimates: “Naa na na naa na!” Doolittle and the Auburn Dam Authority will be hard-pressed to prove that the benefits from such a dam could ever outweigh such high costs. And he was the one to order the study in the first place! It’s beautiful really.

To read the results for yourself, download the study from this website:
http://www.usbr.gov/mp/ccao/docs/auburn_rpt/index.html.

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The Auburn Dam has officially been resurrected from the dead. The last post I wrote warned that proponents of the dam were gaining momentum in D.C…well now they’re off and running. [For some background information, read some of these recent blogs about the Auburn Dam.]

David Whitney, of the Sacramento Bee, reported on Friday that “a House hearing Thursday on protecting the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta from catastrophic levee failures turned into a mini-rally for constructing an Auburn dam on the American River.” [Click here for the full article.]
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As a result of increased Folsom Dam costs and recent flood fears ignited by Hurricane Katrina, congressional supporters of an Auburn Dam have recently been successful in obtaining funding and powerful allies on Capitol Hill that lend momentum to a renewed fight for Auburn Dam’s construction. As a result, the dam has once again become a real possibility, and those of us who recognize its faults (literally and figuratively) need to start making some serious efforts to fight back…

At this point in time last year, most people had accepted that Auburn Dam was a dead idea. The tunnel diverting the American River away from the orginal damsite was finally scheduled to be re-filled as of 2007, and the Placer County Water Agency began construction on a pumping facility designed to extract water from the river’s natural channel. Moreover, Sacramento had obtained 200 million dollars in Federal funding for much-needed Folsom Dam improvements and levee repairs for the purpose of flood control.

But then two things happened.

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An article in the Sacramento Bee last Sunday reported that a proposed Auburn Dam on the American River “could be an expensive mistake.” This article couldn’t have come at a better time, considering all the renewed momentum that dam proponents gained from fears sparked by New Orleans and Hurricane Katrina, and Rep. John Doolittle’s recent attachment to an energy and water appropriations bill calling for a new 1 million dollar dam study. (See earlier post about Katrina Drawing Ill-Founded Support For the Auburn Dam.)

The Bee article, titled ‘Tempting Fate: A Torrent of Doubts,’ pointed out some very important myths and inherent inefficiencies in the dam’s location and design with regards to its supposed purpose as a multiuse dam. Among these are the limited amount of water the dam would have available to sell, the high price that this water would cost, the structure’s dangerous location on a fault line, and the liklihood that it would decrease, rather than increase, area recreational usage.

If all of this is true, then why is the Auburn Dam still on the table? And why do Doolittle and other dam proponents still have such a large base of support? (more…)

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Senator Doolittle has lately been making attempts to put the Auburn Dam back on the table in national legislation. (The Auburn Dam would drown most of the Middle Fork American River canyon and half of the North Fork American.) Lending impetus to this idea is recent “That Could Happen To Us!” speculation that has followed the Hurricane Katrina disaster.

Although certainly not of the teenage-esque mindset that we are immune to natural catastrophe, I can’t help but notice elements of ignored common sense and hysteria within these recent warnings that Sacramento is doomed for the same fate as New Orleans.

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