DAMSIn an Era of Dam Removal, California Is Building More
Earlier this year, the federal government finalized $216 million dollars in funding for a controversial dam project south of the Klamath River, adding to the $1 billion in direct grants already pledged to the project known as Sites Reservoir. This would be California’s first major new reservoir in half a century. Proponents say a new reservoir off the Sacramento River is environmentally friendly.
When the largest dam removal in U.S. history began on the Klamath River this year, it seemed as if the era of dam building was over in the West. Just a month later, however, the federal government finalized $216 million dollars in funding for a controversial dam project south of the Klamath, adding to the $1 billion in direct grants already pledged to the project known as Sites Reservoir. Rights for the water are being distributed this summer.
This would be California’s first major new reservoir in half a century. The project will require building two main dams on a pair of streams that typically only run during big winter rains. Most of the water would come from much farther away, however: Filling the reservoir means piping water from the Sacramento River uphill, away from the Central Valley. If it’s built, the reservoir will inundate Antelope Valley, 14,000 acres of hilly grassland in the California Coast Range, northwest of Sacramento.
Project boosters claim these will be the most environmentally focused dams in California’s history, with water earmarked for environmental purposes (a first, according to the Sites Authority) as well as minimum flow requirements for the Sacramento River. They also argue that the reservoir will actually work better with climate change, which is turning the snow that historically served as a natural reservoir into rainfall. The dams will be able to store the water from those winter rains so that it becomes available during drier spells — which, according to climate projections, will be longer and more frequent.
But environmentalists and leaders of some tribal nations oppose the project, citing its potential impacts on the river’s watershed, especially its salmon runs, which have already been devastated by dam-building and agricultural diversions. Ecologists and environmental advocates worry that additional water diversions during winter will take away the flows and habitat necessary for the migration of sturgeon and chinook salmon.
The Sites Project Authority plans to divert water only during high flows, when the river is rushing and full of water from its many tributaries. But that water has a critical function of its own. As it meanders through the river’s floodplain, it feeds the unique ecosystem along the Sacramento River, now home to farms that host some endangered species. For example, rice farms flooded during winter storms have recently become habitat for chinook salmon.
