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CSPA ACTION ALERT 8.7.09

Speak Out to Protect the Mokelumne River: Please attend the EBMUD 2040  Water Plan Workshop 8.11.09, in Oakland

Say NO to expanded Dams and YES to conservation, recycling and abundant fisheries

Your voices led the East Bay Municipal Utility District (EBMUD) to delay approval of its Water Supply Management Plan 2040. This plan includes a misguided, destructive, and expensive proposal to build a new 400 foot-high Pardee Dam.  The reservoir expansion would drown up to three additional miles of the magnificent Mokelumne River.
 
An enlarged reservoir will take all the water in the river not presently diverted, except for the minimum flow the EBMUD is required to release downstream. It will scalp the hydrograph, and assure that not one “extra” drop of water ever reaches the Delta, except perhaps during major floods.
 
EBMUD refuses to consider a rational alternative that will both protect the river and provide water for their service area: allowing water to remain in the Mokelumne to meet instream needs for subsequent recapture in the Delta for storage in an expanded Los Vaqueros Reservoir west of the Delta.  The state-of-the-art fish screens at Los Vaqueros have only taken one (1) Delta smelt in over ten years of operation.
 
The EBMUD Board is holding a workshop on the 2040 water plan.  We need you, especially EBMUD ratepayers, to tell the Board they need to reject the Pardee expansion, support increased conservation and recycling and join with Contra Costa Water District in expanding Los Vaqueros Reservoir.
 
The workshop will be held:
 
Tuesday morning, August 11
East Bay MUD Headquarters, Training Resource Center
375 11th Street
Oakland, CA 94607
The meeting starts at 8:30 a.m., but discussion of Pardee and Delta impacts should begin around 10 a.m.
 
Members of the public will have 3 minutes to comment during the workshop.  Please attend and vocalize your support for removing the Pardee expansion option from the Water Supply Management Plan.  Join CSPA’s FERC Projects Director Chris Shutes in telling them they need to seek a solution that protects both the Mokelumne and the Delta.
 
For additional information, e-mail Chris Shutes or contact Tim Robertson of the Mokelumne River Protection Alliance (CSPA, Friends of the River, the Foothill Conservancy, Sierra Club, and other groups) at 510-712-8620 for more information about the workshop and talking points.
 
If you can’t make it to the workshop, send an email to the EBMUD Board today!  Include the key points below and email them to your EBMUD Board Chair Doug Linney.
 
Key points to mention:
 
EBMUD should remove the Pardee Reservoir expansion from the 2040 water plan now and not waste more ratepayer money studying or attempting to justify it. It’s time for EBMUD to permanently shelve proposals to expand Pardee instead of dusting off an old plan every few years and dressing it up in new clothes. EBMUD has taken enough of the Mokelumne River and has greener options for water supply.
 
More water, not less, from the Mokelumne River needs to reach the Delta. Minimum flows are minimum flows, not optimum flows.
 
EBMUD use of an expanded Los Vaqueros Reservoir should be analyzed.
 
More recycling and conservation are better solutions for EBMUD’s future dry year water supply. Even if the highest levels of conservation are expensive, they have far lower environmental, social and economic cost than a big new dam.
 
Building a new dam won’t create more rain or snow in the Mokelumne watershed, which couldn’t supply enough water in the drought we just finished. We need more secure sources of water in dry years. Conservation and recycling provide more water during drought than an empty reservoir.
 
A New Pardee dam would be enormously expensive. And it will take years of legal battles and federal licensing to get it approved. Pursuing it is a waste of ratepayer money. Ratepayers should not subsidize a new, destructive dam on the Mokelumne River.