<html><body><div style="color:#000; background-color:#fff; font-family:verdana, helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:16px"><div><a href="http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2015/01/30/18767837.php" target="_blank" style="font-family: HelveticaNeue, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, 'Lucida Grande', sans-serif;">http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2015/01/30/18767837.php</a><br></div><div class="qtdSeparateBR"><br><br></div><div class="yahoo_quoted" style="display: block;"><div style="font-family: verdana, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 16px;"><div style="font-family: HelveticaNeue, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, 'Lucida Grande', sans-serif; font-size: 16px;"><div class="y_msg_container"><br>Photo: The Winnemem Wintu Tribe and their allies protest the plans to <br>raise Shasta Dam and build the peripheral tunnels at the Shasta Dam <br>overlook in September 2013. Photo by Dan Bacher.<br><br>Delta advocates: Shasta Dam raise is a 'massive waste of taxpayer
money'<br><br>Restore the Delta (RTD), opponents of Gov. Brown’s plan to build Tunnels <br>that would drain the Delta and doom salmon and other Pacific fisheries, <br>today called upon the California Water Commission to reject funding the <br>raising of Shasta Dam.<br><br>A recent US Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) report was highly critical <br>of a proposal to raise the height of Shasta Dam, the US Bureau of <br>Reclamation’s main reservoir in the Central Valley Project northwest of <br>Redding. The USFWS found that the project would harm fish habitat in the <br>Delta and Yolo Bypass, as well as around Shasta Lake, and along the <br>length of the Sacramento River.<br><br>“Combine enlarging Shasta with the Delta tunnels project, and you would <br>have two effective ways to kill the Delta without solving California’s <br>water problems,” said Barbara Barrigan-Parrilla, RTD executive director. <br>“There are better solutions, from recycling
and storm water capture, to <br>increasing household, industrial, and farm water use efficiencies.”<br><br>Reducing flood flows to the Delta could reduce the ability of Delta <br>waters to dilute and assimilate contaminants and salts over the long <br>term.<br><br>“Enlarging Shasta Dam would be a massive waste of taxpayer money,” added <br>RTD policy analyst Tim Stroshane. “The Bureau would get very little <br>water for the sums they would spend. The Fish and Wildlife Service <br>confirms it would be an ecological disaster as well.”<br><br>Raising Shasta Dam would decrease Sacramento River flood flows because <br>its purpose would be to increase storage in Shasta Lake by “skimming” <br>future floods. The Bureau’s preferred alternative would only yield <br>another 47,300 acre-feet of supplies to California, at a total cost of <br>over $1.3 billion. The water for that alternative might cost as much as <br>$1,200 an acre-foot. (EWC comment
letter, Table 2, <br><a href="http://ewccalifornia.org/reports/shastadeiscomments.pdf" target="_blank">http://ewccalifornia.org/reports/shastadeiscomments.pdf</a>)<br><br>Decreasing flood flows in the spring would affect Delta fish such as the <br>Delta smelt, Sacramento splittail, and juvenile salmon. These fish <br>depend on flood flows and different flow signals throughout the year to <br>determine when and where they move to survive. In addition, enlarging <br>Shasta Lake, say the federal biologists, would result “in an increase in <br>Delta exports during critically dry water years which could increase the <br>entrainment of Delta smelt and other fish species at the Jones and Banks <br>pumping facilities.” (p. 166)<br><br>“A decrease in Sacramento River flood flows would reduce Bay-Delta <br>flushing flows, affect Delta water quality, and affect Delta outflows” <br>while likely increasing Delta exports, said the USFWS biologists. “All
<br>of these factors may further contribute” to declines of Delta smelt and <br>other fish that live year-round in Delta waters, or migrate through the <br>Delta to and from the Pacific Ocean. (p. 127)<br><br>“Neither the Bureau nor the California Department of Water Resources <br>have looked at enlarging Shasta Dam and the Tunnels project in good <br>faith,” said Stroshane. “In 2007, the Fish and Wildlife Service told the <br>Bureau that only in the worst 10 percent of the time would salmon see <br>any benefits from the project. When will the Bureau recognize it cannot <br>make a silk purse from this sow’s ear?”<br><br>The biologists recommended that the Bureau should redo its no action <br>alternative, evaluate how to increase salmon survival without enlarging <br>Shasta Dam, and make changes to the enlargement alternatives, including <br>revisiting ideas for mitigating fish impacts that the Bureau earlier had
<br>rejected.<br><br>“Enlarging Shasta Dam is the very definition of a boondoggle,” said <br>Barrigan-Parrilla. “A lot of money up front, a lot of environmental <br>damage along the way, but only a little bit of water down the road for <br>all that effort and heartache. Fortunately, there are better solutions.”<br><br>Source: US Bureau of Reclamation, Draft Plan Formulation Appendix, <br>Shasta Lake Water Resources Investigation, California, June 2013, Tables <br>5-9 and 5-10, pp. 5-110 and 5-111; and California Environmental Water <br>Caucus.<br><br>Excerpted from EWC Comments on Shasta Raise DEIS, September 2013, online <br>at http://ewccalifornia.org/reports/shastadeiscomments.pdf.<br><br>Contact: Steve Hopcraft 916/457-5546; steve [at] hopcraft.com; Twitter: <br>@shopcraft;<br>Barbara Barrigan-Parrilla 209/479-2053 barbara [at] restorethedelta.org; <br>Twitter: @RestoretheDelta<br><br></div> </div> </div> </div> </div></body></html>