Shasta Dam expansion plan: Construction boom would follow Shasta Dam raising
By Dylan Darling (Contact)
Monday, February 19, 2007
Raising Shasta Dam would bring a wave of construction and change around Lake Shasta.
Moving campgrounds and waterproofing piers on the Pit River bridge are some of the bevy of projects that would be needed to ready the lake for a new footprint brought by higher water from a higher dam.
The Bureau of Reclamation is going through the process of evaluating these projects and their environmental impacts as part of a feasibility study of the raising of the dam. The study is due next year and, if approved, construction could start in four years, said Donna Garcia, who is heading the study for the Bureau of Reclamation.
"2011 would be the soonest we would see any potential construction," she said.
Shasta is one of four projects that state and federal agencies are looking at to increase the amount of water storage in the state, Garcia said. The others are a new 1.8 million acre-foot reservoir in Colusa County, an expansion of an additional 250,000 to 400,000 acre-feet of water at Los Vaqueros reservoir in Contra Costa County and a raising of Friant Dam in Fresno County, which would add 700,000 to 1 million acre-feet of water.
Garcia said whether the projects are pursued depends on the results of their individual feasibility studies.
While the Bureau is now focusing on a 61/2-foot to 181/2-foot increase in Shasta Dam's height, the massive concrete dam -- second most massive in terms of concrete used behind Grand Coulee Dam in Washington -- could support an increase of 200 feet.
