Opinion: Undammed if You Do
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Over in the news pages, Capitol Journal columnist George Skelton today pours cold Sierra runoff on the environmentalist dream of tearing down the Toulumne River’s O’Shaughnessy Dam so that Hetch Hetchy Valley near Yosemite can be restored to its original meadow splendor, memorably described by naturalist hero John Muir as ‘one of nature’s rarest and most precious mountain temples.’ (Here’s a useful before-and-after comparison; also, see this Travel section piece from a half-year ago, and another from the short-lived Outdoors section.)
Skelton’s takes mirrors that of our Editorial Board, which stated this July (sorry, no link):
[I]t’s not at all clear that dismantling the dam and restoring the valley is the right thing to do now. [...] [R]estoring the valley would be hellishly expensive -- $3 billion to $10 billion. [...] Restoring Hetch Hetchy is a beautiful environmental dream. But it does not belong on anyone’s short list of priority projects.
Any dams closer to home on the demolition list? Why, yes -- the silt-packed Matilija Dam, keeping the Ventura River at bay. According to a recent VC Reporter article,
A $130 million project to topple the massive Matilija Dam would be well underway if Ventura County, state agencies and local organizations could provide the local $52 million portion of the project’s whopping price tag.
And there’s the Malibu Creek’s Rindge Dam. All of which is an elaborate excuse to link to still more river-related Christmas books:
Dam Politics: Restoring America’s Rivers, by William R. Lowry (April 2003).
Watershed: The Undamming of America, by Elizabeth Grossman (June 2002).
Silenced Rivers: The Ecology and Politics of Large Dams, by Patrick McCully (December 2001).
The Great Thirst: Californians and Water-A History, by Norris Hundley, Jr. (March 2001).
And, of course, the classic: Cadillac Desert: The American West and Its Disappearing Water, by Marc Reisner (August 1986).