In today’s Letters section in the Bee, there were a couple of thoughtful letters about the renewed interest in the Auburn Dam.
Here are excerpts.
Letter 1) "The American River Authority has always supported the construction of a dam at the Auburn site. The basic problem is that Sacramento County and Yolo County are not part of that board. Money must be raised to finish the feasibility study and environmental reports. Five counties rather than three will make it easier to raise that money.
"The feasibility report will prove that a multipurpose dam is the best answer, compared to a "dry" dam. Five hundred year protection is much superior to the current 100-year protection. Revenue bonds can be sold to fund the project, especially if the feds fund the flood-control protection portion of the dam."
Letter 2) "In the early 1980s, I was an undergraduate geology student at CSUS. We studied the Auburn dam site. My instructor, a sedimentary petrologist, kept repeating his alarm over putting such a high-capacity dam in a canyon where the layers of shale could possibly slide under the lubricating effects of water under pressure. At the time, he said the engineers planned to bolt together the layers where the dam's foundation would connect to the walls of the canyon."
