Delta advocates: Shasta Dam raise is a 'massive waste of taxpayer money'

Delta advocates: Shasta Dam raise is a 'massive waste of taxpayer money'

by Dan Bacher

Restore the Delta (RTD), opponents of Governor Jerry Brown’s Bay Delta Conservation Plan (BDCP) to build giant tunnels that would drain the Delta and doom salmon and other Pacific fisheries,on January 30 called upon the California Water Commission to reject funding the raising of Shasta Dam.

RTD joins the Winnemem Wintu Tribe, fishing groups and an array of environmental groups in opposing the dam raise, a government boondoggle that would flood many of the Tribe's remaining sacred sites and would devastate Central Valley salmon and Delta fish populations.

"A recent US Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) report was highly critical of a proposal to raise the height of Shasta Dam, the US Bureau of Reclamation’s main reservoir in the Central Valley Project northwest of Redding," according to a press release from RTD. "The USFWS found that the project would harm fish habitat in the Delta and Yolo Bypass, as well as around Shasta Lake, and along the length of the Sacramento River."

“Combine enlarging Shasta with the Delta tunnels project, and you would have two effective ways to kill the Delta without solving California’s water problems,” said Barbara Barrigan-Parrilla, RTD executive director. “There are better solutions, from recycling and storm water capture, to increasing household, industrial, and farm water use efficiencies.”

She said reducing flood flows to the Delta could reduce the ability of Delta waters to dilute and assimilate contaminants and salts over the long term.

“Enlarging Shasta Dam would be a massive waste of taxpayer money,” added RTD policy analyst Tim Stroshane. “The Bureau would get very little water for the sums they would spend. The Fish and Wildlife Service confirms it would be an ecological disaster as well.”

Raising Shasta Dam would decrease Sacramento River flood flows because its purpose would be to increase storage in Shasta Lake by “skimming” future floods. The Bureau’s preferred alternative would only yield another 47,300 acre-feet of supplies to California, at a total cost of over $1.3 billion. The water for that alternative might cost as much as $1,200 an acre-foot, according to the Environmental Water Caucus. (EWC comment letter, Table 2, http://ewccalifornia.org/reports/shastadeiscomments.pdf)

Decreasing flood flows in the spring would affect Delta fish including the Delta smelt, now on the verge of extinction, as well as Sacramento splittail and juvenile salmon and steelhead. These fish depend on flood flows and different flow signals throughout the year to determine when and where they move to survive.

In addition, enlarging Shasta Lake would result “in an increase in Delta exports during critically dry water years which could increase the entrainment of Delta smelt and other fish species at the Jones and Banks pumping facilities," the federal biologists reported.

“A decrease in Sacramento River flood flows would reduce Bay-Delta flushing flows, affect Delta water quality, and affect Delta outflows” while likely increasing Delta exports," said the USFWS biologists. “All of these factors may further contribute” to declines of Delta smelt and other fish that live year-round in Delta waters, or migrate through the Delta to and from the Pacific Ocean. (p. 127)

Stroshane commented, “Neither the Bureau nor the California Department of Water Resources have looked at enlarging Shasta Dam and the Tunnels project in good faith. In 2007, the Fish and Wildlife Service told the Bureau that only in the worst 10 percent of the time would salmon see any benefits from the project. When will the Bureau recognize it cannot make a silk purse from this sow’s ear?”

The biologists recommended that the Bureau should redo its "no action alternative," evaluate how to increase salmon survival without enlarging Shasta Dam, and make changes to the enlargement alternatives, including revisiting ideas for mitigating fish impacts that the Bureau earlier had rejected.

“Enlarging Shasta Dam is the very definition of a boondoggle,” said Barrigan-Parrilla. “A lot of money up front, a lot of environmental damage along the way, but only a little bit of water down the road for all that effort and heartache. Fortunately, there are better solutions.”

Responding to the report, Caleen Sisk, Chief and Spiritual Leader of the Winnemem Wintu Tribe, said, "While the US Fish and Wildlife biologists are on track, they offer no resolve as to a 'fix.'"

She criticized the agencies for refusing to include the Tribe in efforts to restore wild salmon.

"So far the US Fish and Wildlife Service, NOAA and BOR have not included the Winnemem Wintu Tribe in the solutions to address the wild Chinook," Sisk emphasized. "There are no studies, that I am aware of, that address the flooding of salmon spawning grounds, unless they have finally realized that the raise of Shasta Dam will flood the Sacramento River, McCloud River, and Squaw Creek. These are all possible rich spawning waters that will be flooded by the 18.5' raise."

"Perhaps the BOR is now being held accountable for more than the 'cold water pool' to help salmon," she said. "The Shasta Dam raise EIS cites no effort to provide a swimway passage for the wild winter run and all runs of Chinook, nor makes any effort to assist salmon in the mountain waters."

The Tribe has been trying for years to restore winter run Chinook to the McCloud River above Shasta Lake by reintroducing the original strain of winter Chinook that are now thriving in the Rakaira and other rivers in New Zealand, but the federal agencies have to date refused to back their efforts.

"There is no effort to work with the Indigenous Peoples of the McCloud River Watershed," said Sisk. "The BOR's plans for wild winter run Chinook fall desperately short of a real viable production of salmon."

She concluded, "The Winnemem Wintu stand ready to assist as soon as Sue Fry of the Bureau of Reclamation will allow us to participate in the plan."

For more information about the USFWS report criticizing the raising of Shasta Dam, go to: http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2015/01/28/18767701.php

Source: US Bureau of Reclamation, Draft Plan Formulation Appendix, Shasta Lake Water Resources Investigation, California, June 2013, Tables 5-9 and 5-10, pp. 5-110 and 5-111; and California Environmental Water Caucus.

Excerpted from EWC Comments on Shasta Raise DEIS, September 2013, online at http://ewccalifornia.org/reports/shastadeiscomments.pdf.

Contact: Steve Hopcraft 916/457-5546; steve [at] hopcraft.com; Twitter: @shopcraft;
Barbara Barrigan-Parrilla 209/479-2053 barbara [at] restorethedelta.org; Twitter:@RestoretheDelta