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EBMUD keeps Pardee Dam option open despite protests

 

by Chris Shutes, FERC Projects Director

October 16, 2009 -- The East Bay Municipal Utilities District Board of Directors has voted 4-2 to retain the option to raise Pardee Dam and drown over two miles of the Mokelumne River.
 
The option is contained within EBMUD’s 30-year Water Supply Management Plan, which was approved at the EBMUD Board meeting on October 13. Also approved by the Board was the certification of the Programmatic Environmental Impact Report for the Plan.
 
Over 70 people spoke in opposition to the Pardee raise, including CSPA FERC Projects Director Chris Shutes, and representatives of the Environmental Water Caucus, Friends of the River, and Foothill Conservancy. A demonstration organized by Foothill Conservancy preceded the meeting. Unidentified persons also placed banners reading “No dams” atop the District’s emblem above the entrance to its building.
 
“The decision to leave the Pardee raise as an option in the Water Supply Management Plan is a bad one,” said Shutes. “EBMUD has not analyzed the fishery impacts, which are significant. This will not provide a dry year water supply. The hydrology is house of cards built on a foundation of hopes and reckless assumptions. It won’t provide water when it is supposed to be needed. And the water probably won’t be needed when EBMUD says it will. It’s a project in search of a purpose.”
 
EBMUD Board President Doug Linney, who voted against the Plan, stated after the vote that the Pardee Expansion is “out of synch with the times we’re in now and where we will be in 20 to 30 years. It will be an albatross around our neck, a symbol of everything the East Bay Municipal Utility District is not.”
 
As a concession to environmental interests, the Board included in its resolution approving the Plan explicit support for federal Wild and Scenic status for the Mokelumne River upstream of Highway 49. “We don’t have the language yet, so we’re not sure exactly what the commitment is,” said Shutes. “But we will pursue a broad interpretation of the intent, and press for practical action on this on a short timeline.”
 
Foothill Conservancy and others (including CSPA) who have campaigned for the last four months to oppose the raise of Pardee Dam are “considering their options,” according to Foothill Conservancy’s President Katherine Evatt.