Most of the fervor is coming from the dam opponents, and you could read more about that in our water report on our website, arpps.org.
Editorial: Can he build a dam?
Water projects may elude Schwarzenegger
Published 12:00 am PST Saturday, January 13, 2007
He has a track record of fighting global warming, reforming workers' compensation and spending billions on roads, schools and levees. But can Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger persuade the Legislature to invest a few billion dollars on new reservoir projects in California? Of the many initiatives in the governor's State of the State speech Tuesday, new reservoirs elicit near-religious fervor from legislators who love or loathe them. While it may be hard for the warring water interests and the Legislature to remain steadfastly agnostic on the subject for a while, their appropriate starting points are patience, open minds and closed wallets.
The governor has offered two possible reservoir projects. To the north of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, Sites Reservoir would store water from the Sacramento River, off-stream, in a barren, bowl-like valley to the west of Maxwell. To the south on the San Joaquin River, Temperance Flat Dam would impound close behind the existing Friant Dam northeast of Fresno.
Not all dams are created equal in their potential public value. Sites Reservoir would be an intriguing tool to better manage water releases into the Delta. It also could aid flood control, because water could be shifted into Sites to create more empty space behind the big dams: Shasta on the Sacramento River and Oroville on the Feather River.
Temperance Flat, meanwhile, could capture the big flood flows on the San Joaquin that now go to the Delta and to the sea. The San Joaquin is a schizophrenic river that runs dry (because of diversion to agriculture) when it is not flooding its banks. Temperance Flat would act as a tempering influence to this dysfunctional system.
