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Temperance Flat Project Said To Be Feasible But Faces “Wild & Scenic “ Designation

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More water for the Valley?

 

Local officials working to secure funding for the $2.6 billion Temperance Flat reservoir above Millerton got some good news recently when they were advised that the Bureau of Reclamation will soon release their final feasibility report for the storage project and it will be positive – providing benefits for water supply reliability and the San Joaquin River ecosystem. It will say building the dam is expected to be technically feasible, constructible, and can be operated as well as being environmentally feasible.

 

Chair of  the San Joaquin Valley Water Infrastructure Authority Steve Worthley says that good news “makes it hard to understand why the Bureau of Reclamation would consider a staff proposal by their sister agency – the Bureau of Land Management (BLM)  to designate the upper part the San Joaquin River “Wild and Scenic”making more water storage on the San Joaquin “impossible and illegal.”

 

The local Authority includes representatives from Tulare and Kings as well as Fresno, Merced and Madera counties. The joint powers group is led by Tulare County Supervisor Worthley. Last month Worthley wrote the Secretary of Interior who oversees both Reclamation and the BLM. Worthley urged the agency to consider that Congress itself has supported the project and that should be “weighed more heavily than a Bakersfield BLM staff proposal.”

 

“All this does not make any sense given that the Bureau is concluding the project is feasible and is supportive of the effort to to get state funding to help build it as well.” He says the federal Bureau of Reclamation recently signed a MOU  with the Valley joint powers authority to help write the application for state funding from the California Water Commission who will decide how $2.7 billion in state funding for several projects is spent.

 

Worthley says a recent meeting with the Water Commission set a deadline for the application of June 2017,sooner than planned previously.

 

The local group’s letter offers this background.

 

“Our Authority is a recently-formed joint powers public agency that comprises five counties and several cities as well as water agencies and a Tribal Council. We were organized under California law. The Authority’s purpose is to seek means to develop much needed new above-ground and groundwater supply storage through construction of key regional infrastructure opportunities designed to resolve water shortage problems for all of Valley users.

 

More than 20 years of federal investment and study, directed and carried out at a cost of approximately $36 million to date by Interior and Reclamation, have gone into the Temperance Flat project. This effort was initiated in 1995 by the CALFED Bay-Delta Program (in which Interior, Reclamation and the State of California were full partners).

 

Despite so many years of federal resource investment and favorable findings in the feasibility study, the BLM in recent years decided to pursue a San Joaquin River Wild and Scenic Rivers designation. Such a designation would include a segment of the same river reach proposed to be included within a new Temperance Flat Reservoir and would prevent the project’s development.

 

BLM’s proposed designation makes clear that the agency wants to ensure this short San Joaquin River segment “shall be preserved in free-flowing condition.” However, if such is the objective, it is one that can never be attained. Seldom is it possible for the San Joaquin River to be “free flowing” through the proposed “wild” foothill segment. Seven major dams and nine small dams owned by the Southern California Edison and Pacific Gas and Electric companies operate upstream from this location. Those dams and reservoirs store and divert water     through bypass tunnels and penstocks into a dozen power plants to generate electricity. “

 

The letter concludes as follows.

 

“Our Authority, on behalf of the more than two million residents who live within the five valley counties we represent, supports Reclamation’s Temperance Flat efforts and preliminary plans, and opposes BLM’s Wild and Scenic Rivers proposal for the San Joaquin River. Respectfully, we ask that you and the Interior Department do the same.”

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