This article from today’s Bee is a fuller explanation of the previous post on the Auburn Dam discussion in Congress.
The most significant aspect of this discussion is that the dam can be completed about the same time as the levee improvements and Folsom Dam modifications, all of which are needed to provide the optimal protection to Sacramento and the Parkway.
Here is an excerpt.
House panel favors dam
By David Whitney -- Bee Washington Bureau Published 2:15 am PDT Friday, April 7, 2006
WASHINGTON - A House hearing Thursday on protecting the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta from catastrophic levee failures turned into a mini-rally for constructing an Auburn dam on the American River.
Reps. Richard Pombo, R-Tracy, and George Radanovich, R-Mariposa, said a multipurpose dam at Auburn was the only way Sacramento would be able to achieve the 500-year flood protection that other urban areas have.
Others said an Auburn dam also would help relieve pressure on Delta levees during threatening flood conditions.
The remarks came at a House Resources Committee hearing conducted by its energy and water panel. Pombo is chairman of the full committee and Radanovich heads the energy and power subcommittee.
The building Republican enthusiasm for a dam comes as Rep. John Doolittle, R-Roseville, is planning to move ahead with funding for a feasibility study on the dam in a 2007 spending bill for the Bureau of Reclamation that would build it.
Twice before the Sacramento-area congressional delegation has tried to pass legislation authorizing construction of a dry dam at Auburn that would retain water only when the American River was in flood.
Both times the effort was defeated, first on the House floor and later in committee.
But Doolittle is proceeding under a 1965 authorization for a multipurpose dam with year-round storage and power production.
While more than $400 million was spent on land acquisition and construction, work on the dam stopped in 1975 because of concerns about its ability to survive an earthquake.
Those questions were later resolved, but by then the local share of the cost for such projects had been raised by Congress and construction was never revived.
Hurricane Katrina has redoubled political pressure to increase Sacramento and Delta flood protection and given dam proponents new ammunition.
New Orleans had more than twice the level of protection of Sacramento, the most at-risk urban area in the country from flooding, and its devastation has intensified efforts to protect Sacramento from a similar fate.
At Thursday's hearing, Radanovich stressed that the standard for protection of most major urban areas is 500 years, meaning a 1 in 500 chance of major flooding in any given year.
The only way to reach that goal in Sacramento is to build an Auburn dam.
