March 26, 2017
It is time to re-think how California handles dams.
Actually, it is beyond time, and if you need proof, consider two recent cases that suggest the current system doesn’t work.
One is the failure of Oroville Dam’s spillway and nearly disastrous, but predictable, eroding of its emergency spillway during heavy rains in February. The other is the continued seismic dangers of San Luis Reservoir and water managers’ seeming disregard for those dangers.
The first example, the Oroville Dam debacle has received a lot of attention and is probably familiar to you by now. Sierra Club and other environmental groups and water agencies warned years ago, in formal filings in a dam relicensing process, that the emergency spillway was inadequate and unsafe. But the dam’s owner and operator—California’s Department of Water Resources (DWR)—ignored the warnings or rationalized them away.
The second example has been less noticed, but is equally disturbing and potentially as dangerous.
The San Luis Reservoir, which is an off-stream reservoir held together by a 372-foot-high earthen dam, is the collection point for water that DWR pumps into it from the San Francisco Bay Delta. It’s the fifth largest reservoir in California.
As Deirdre Des Jardins recently noted in her online report, California Water Research, the dam at San Luis Reservoir has suffered serious degradation in the past. Today, it is so susceptible to collapse in the event of an earthquake that under the Bureau of Reclamation’s guidelines, the reservoir should not be filled to capacity, Des Jardins notes.
But in fact, that’s what DWR did. In February, it allowed the reservoir to carry a whole lot more water than it safely can.
DWR apparently disregarded published analysis by Bureau of Reclamation staff calling for the reservoir to be left well short of full until it is seismically upgraded. By doing that, DWR endangered more than 200,000 people living in the path of flooding if the earthen dam gave way.
Do you see a pattern here?
A common denominator?
You guessed it: these two cases have poor judgement by DWR in common. And the way dam oversight is set up, everyone had to depend on DWR to decide how to manage or operate or upgrade its dams. Other agencies either didn’t have the will or the power to force DWR to act more responsibly.
A Sierra Club activist recently suggested to me that the state needs to establish an independent office of dam inspection and safety enforcement that can force dam owners (especially DWR) to fix problems when they are identified.
It would force DWR to focus attention on the condition of the 1,500 dams in the state and either dismantle or fix those that are silted up, seismically unsafe, or at risk of failure for other reasons. It would make it harder for DWR to whine about costs, and then wander off like some easily distracted child to its next shiny new project—like the outdated Delta tunnels—before cleaning up the mess left behind.
It’s a good idea, at the right time.
Do you agree? Let me know.
Sincerely,
Kathryn Phillips
Director
Sierra Club California is the Sacramento-based legislative and regulatory advocacy arm of the 13 California chapters of the Sierra Club.
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