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The Dam Truth about California Water!

“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.” - Joseph Goebbels

By Dan Bacher

In the tradition of Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi propagandist, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger keeps repeating at his press conferences and meetings the big lie that no dams or water storage facilities have been constructed in California in the past 20 to 30 years. Apparently, Scharzenegger is hoping that if he repeats it enough, people will come to believe this lie. This fallacy is being used to bolster his call for a Peripheral Canal and more dams in California, although the truth is that several major dams and other storage facilities have been constructed during the last 30 years.

On July 14 at a town meeting in Bakersfield, the Governor stated, "Do you know that for 20 years, well, actually since the late '70s, they have not built a dam? I mean, think about that. They have not built a dam.”

Then on Monday, July 16, the Governor discussed his “Comprehensive Water Plan” at San Luis Reservoir, repeating this lie again. “But over the last 20 years we have not built a single major reservoir that connects to this great system here, even though we have a population growth from 20 million to 37 million people over the same period,” he said.
More recently, on July 28, Gov. Schwarzenegger toured Long Beach Aquifer to discuss his Water Plan for Southern California, yet again repeating another variation of this fallacy.

“Right now our water system is extremely vulnerable,” he stated. “For one thing, we haven’t built a major state reservoir in more than 30 years and in that time our population has grown from 20 million to 37 million. We must solve California’s water problems not only for today, but for 40 years from now.”

However, the objective reality is that a number of dams and reservoirs have been constructed in California since the late seventies, including some of the largest reservoirs in their respective regions.

The Contra Costa County Water District constructed one of the Bay Area’s largest ever reservoirs, Los Vaqueros near Livermore, during 1994-1997. The lake was filled to capacity and opened to recreation for the first time in September 2001. The lake has a capacity of 100,000 acre-feet of water now – and the reservoir is set for expansion in the future.

More recently, Diamond Valley Reservoir, built by the Metropolitan Water District (MWD) of Southern California to improve dry year reliability, was finished in 2003. The lake, located between Temecula and Hemet off Hwy. 79 at Newport Rd. in the Domenigoni/Diamond valleys, has a capacity of 800,000 acre-feet of water and is the largest-ever reservoir constructed in Southern California.

According to MWD’s website, “This reservoir is larger than Lake Havasu and took 4 years to fill. This reservoir will hold as much water as combining Castaic Lake, Lake Mathews, Pyramid Lake, Lake Perris and Lake Skinner into one.”

This reservoir almost doubles Southern California's surface storage capacity and secures six months of emergency storage in the event of a major earthquake.

In addition, the newest federal Central Valley Project reservoir, San Justo Reservoir, was constructed by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation as part of the San Felipe Division beginning in 1987. Water in San Justo comes from the massive San Luis Reservoir.

There is no doubt that the California dam building frenzy of the period from 1945 through 1970 is long over, but this was because almost all of the suitable on-stream dam sites already had dams built on them or were located on federally designated “wild and scenic” rivers.
As Spreck Rosekrans of Environmental Defense points out, "Water supply development continues in California, though today's solutions are different from those adopted during the middle of the 20th century. Today there are few practical opportunities to build new dams that would impound the natural flow of a large river. Most of California's major rivers are either already dammed, protected by law, or too remote to be economically developed." (See "Recently Developed Water Storage Capacity in California, Environmental Defense, April 2007).

He continues, “Innovative water managers are finding, however, that they can extend supplies in a variety of ways, including increased efficiency, recycling, local storage, groundwater management, and transfers and exchanges with other agencies that have different sources and different needs.”

Rosekranz emphasizes that since 1990, 6,200,000 acre-feet of storage have been developed at six sites alone. This storage includes the 900,000 acre-feet of off-stream storage at Los Vaqueros and Diamond Valley, combined with groundwater aquifers.

These aquifers have been developed either to serve local communities or to use as "banks" that exchange ground and surface supplies, using California's vast network of canals, with distant communities in dry years, said Rosekrans.

Whether the Schwarzenegger or his staff concocted these lies about California water storage really doesn’t make any difference. However, I call on the Governor NOW to stop repeating these mistruths as justification for his mad drive to build the peripheral canal and two new reservoirs. The two new proposed dams, Sites Dam in the Sacramento Valley and Temperance Dam on the San Joaquin River, are not considered to be economically feasible for the amount of additional water storage they would provide.
Building a peripheral canal or constructing economically unfeasible dams will not provide the solution to California’s water problems. The solution is for California and the federal government to take drainage-impaired land in the San Joaquin Valley out of agricultural production and to promote innovative ways of water conservation that will allow California’s fragile water supply to serve both environmental needs and the needs of cities, farmers and industry.

Arnold, when are you going to tell the truth about California water?

Dan Bacher is an editor of The Fish Sniffer , described as "The #1 Newspaper in the World Dedicated Entirely to Fishermen"

Posted on August 03, 2007

Comments

I thing YOU are doing a disservice by bending the meaning and words it better slam the governor (especailly comparing him to a nazi - that's as underhanded as you get). There is truth to the comments because he is talking about Major Reservoirs that are connected to the Sacramento/San Joaquin system that would benefit ALL the people on the delivery systems. The dams you cited were primarily drinking water and have no contact rules (check at Diamond Valley and Los Vaqueros about body contact) and they service a specific population and do nothing to ADD to the water that is available, they just store their existing water supply. The Governor is looking to develop additional water that can be stored during RAIN events (check your global climate change info) and released later for the benenit of 25 + million Californians.

Posted by: Michael at August 3, 2007 11:13 AM

Hey Dan, you quote on the "Big Lie" was attributed to the wrong guy. It should be credited to Comrade Bill Cavala...

Name calling with a dash of hate mongering thrown in. Typical left/liberal/democrat mantra style. Hope you are proud of yourself. Didn't even bother to read your article after the first few lines...

Posted by: Joe Stalin at August 3, 2007 04:35 PM

If the author is concerned with accuracy by people trying to sway the public, he should take more care to actually understand the statements he is condemning. Each of the quotes from the Governor is specifically referring to the State Water Project, and they are correct that there has not been a dam constructed in relation to that project since the 70s.
The reservoirs the author uses as evidence of the "big lie" are owned by specific agencies and were financed through the rate payers of those systems, not the state government. Unless this author is implying that the state should sieze control of these sources of water for distribution elsewhere, there are plenty of places in our state which continue to see a shortage of water storage capacity.
Lastly, comparing any contemporary public figure in the US to the Nazi regime is rather foolish and certianly doesn't add to one's persuasiveness.

Posted by: james at August 6, 2007 08:34 AM

"Each of the quotes from the Governor is specifically referring to the State Water Project, and they are correct that there has not been a dam constructed in relation to that project since the 70s."

Apparently you didn't carefully read my article nor did you read the governor's press releases on this. These quotes are "not specifically refererring to the State Water Project," they are referring to dams and reservoirs throughout California!

The Governor was very broadly talking about California water and you apparently can't face up to the fact that his broad characterization is simply not true. Maybe the Governor and his staff need to do a little more research before making broad, untrue statements.

I wouldn't have even written this unless if he had said, "The California Water Project hasn't built any dams or projects for 30 years."

That would have been a true statement that I have no argument. But what the Governor said is completely untrue. Are people supposed to read his mind?

Virtually all of the good dam sites are already occupied. Take a good, long look at a California map and you can see that all of the economically feasible dam sites are already taken.

You can't "create" more water - at this point, desalinizaton of sea water, increased water conservation, and the removal of drainage impaired land from agricultural production are the only viable options for increasing water supply for a growing population.

Posted by: Dan at August 6, 2007 09:37 AM

"Each of the quotes from the Governor is specifically referring to the State Water Project, and they are correct that there has not been a dam constructed in relation to that project since the 70s."

I wouldn't have even written this unless if he had said, "The California Water Project hasn't built any dams or projects for 30 years."

That would have been a true statement that I have no argument with. But what the Governor said is completely untrue. Are people supposed to read his mind?

Virtually all of the good dam sites are already occupied. Take a good, long look at a California map and you can see that all of the economically feasible dam sites are already taken.

Posted by: Dan at August 6, 2007 09:38 AM

Arnold is a movie star - a paid CHARACTER, playing a role to keep his audience spell bound. Arnold is a big, powerful man - he can lift heavy weights too. And how about that accent - more of a diversion?
Temperance Flat dam. Step aside Arnie - it is time for the truth to be exposed. Something the public has yet to be informed of. There would otherwise be no argument over what is clearly, the biggest and most corrupt operation in the history of CA.
Temperance Dam was being planned 50+/- yrs ago - it appears to be the other side of "Operation Rezone." Development. Greed. Felony altering of water infrastructures and re-routing water in order to come this far. Destruction of city(s), lives, homes, businesses. A nightmare that has been going on right under everyone's noses.
Temperance Flat dam a disaster? The disaster has already taken place - please look at my web page www.myspace.com/marlalk (requires registration but is free and only takes a minute) to see what has been done. It is the wipe out that appears to be scheduled next. With all the real estate fraud and real estate theft behind this, imagine the insurance claims for the development planned behind this.

Posted by: Marla at January 6, 2008 02:24 PM

The truth is we need more water! I need water to make a living for my self and help feed many people of the U.S. As the population grows so does our demand for food = need for more water to produce more food. There are still a large number of fetile soil acres that can produce more food but water is the only hold up. In fact California farmers are struggling to supply watter to farm ground currently in production.
We can become reliant on other nations for our food supply just as we did with our oil, but then fuel prices would not be all we would be complaning about. Currently China is working on many water storage projects to provide irrigation to much of it fallow landscape. Already many of china's agricultural food commodities have been itroduced to the U.S. market even before many of their water projects have been commpleted. Can't wait to see what the neer future entails! I take my hat of to china for being agressive and fullfilling their water shortages, but at the same time I don't want to be at another contries mercy to eat dinner. Arnold knows that California is globaly behind the 8 ball on maintainning a proper amount of water storage for all reasons. I applause him for realizing this serious matter. I agree in realation to our higher water demands nothing realy has been done in the last 30 years. So I back him 100% on future creatin of water storage stuctures, and anyone who would disagree is a anti-american.

Posted by: Andy at January 8, 2008 10:52 PM

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