Another One Bites the Dust
Proposed Pacheco Dam Impact Area, Photo credit: StopPachecoDam.org
Proposed Pacheco Dam Is Withdrawn from the Proposition 1 Funding Race.
There’s not a lot of satisfaction in being able to say, I told you so, but FOR and the other opponents of what would become the 2014 Proposition 1 California Water Bond had pretty much nailed it on the head. The law of diminishing returns makes more dams in California a risky financial bet — and pretty sketchy on providing much new water.
But with then Governor Jerry Brown spending much of his reelection campaign funds on Propositions 1 & 2, these economic arguments were crushed by TV ads and endorsements from dam boosters.
While the sizzle from the campaign ads seemed to promise much more, backers of only four dams (with another waiting in the wings) applied for allocations of the taxpayer-provided $2.7 billion in grants potentially available from the bond.
Yet one by one, three of the dam proposals were withdrawn by the applicants when the cruel economic feasibility arithmetic became evident.
First, it was the giant proposed Temperance Flat dam on the U.S. Bureau of Land Management wild & scenic river-recommended San Joaquin River Gorge. But it wasn’t environmental arguments that carried the day, it was the difficulty of putting together the deals for any “new water” from the fully spoken-for (i.e., fully appropriated) San Joaquin River. The dam was put in “deferred” status.
Second to fall was the Los Vaqueros Reservoir expansion proposal, which collapsed when the proponent, the Contra Costa County Water District, surprisingly failed to find other Bay Area partners for the project. The Commission spread out the returned funding allocation to the more “promising” remaining Prop 1 storage projects.
Not quite so surprisingly, in late August this year, the Santa Clara Valley Water District (Valley Water) threw in the towel on its proposed 140,000-acre-foot Pacheco Dam project near the south entrance of Henry Coe State Park. Seismic and constructability issues had forced a relocation, and the resulting planned reservoir would be —inconveniently and illegally—in the State Park. Moreover, the proposed dam had tripled in cost and Valley Water had other alternatives.
Unfortunately, that leaves the California Water Commission with $480 million now jingling in its pockets. Prop 1 critics had predicted that the Commission, which allocates the bond money, might not find capable takers for the free taxpayer money they were handing out. We speculated that they just might need to return millions, perhaps billions, to the state’s general fund. We opined that such a course would not be a bad outcome.
However, that is unlikely to be the sentiment at the Water Commission. Instead, they will try to keep their remaining eligible projects (four groundwater projects and the Sites Reservoir) alive. Also, the Commission could encourage Stanislaus County’s “Regional Project” and the Del Puerto Water District, sponsor of the 82,000-acre-foot Del Puerto dam, to complete their applications for Prop 1 money. Never underestimate the staying power of a bad idea.
