Pamo Dam Project Advances as Bid for Re-Evaluation Is Denied

A controversial plan to build a massive dam and reservoir in a pristine valley near Ramona cleared another hurdle Thursday when federal environmental and wildlife officials lost their bid for re-evaluation of the project by top U.S. Army officials.

John Doyle Jr., acting assistant secretary of the Army, turned down requests by the Environmental Protection Agency and the Fish and Wildlife Service for high-ranking Army officials to reconsider the Army Corps of Engineers’ decision to approve a permit for the Pamo Dam.

Doyle’s decision, announced Thursday, short-circuits what might have become another lengthy review of the oft-delayed dam--a project that would sacrifice one of the last valleys of its kind in San Diego County in order to store water for emergencies.

Some Points Considered

However, the environmental agencies’ objections may not be ignored.

Under Doyle’s decision, the Los Angeles district of the Army Corps must still consider two arguments made by the environmental agencies before finalizing its decision to grant a permit for the Pamo Dam project.

The EPA argues that there are less-expensive and less-damaging alternatives to the $86-million project. The Fish and Wildlife Service contends that the permit proposed by the Corps offers inadequate compensation for the environmental damage that would be caused by the dam.

“Although he has decided that the Army will not look into the matter, he has found some validity in the points that EPA has made,” said Susan Kranzler, a Corps spokeswoman. “He is asking that the L.A. district look into those points before a decision is made.”

The district engineer, Col. Tadahiko Ono, is likely to take several weeks to review the issues and make a final decision, Kranzler said. After that, the EPA will have 10 days to decide whether to exercise its legal option to veto the entire project.

Terry Wilson, an EPA spokesman in San Francisco, said such a step is extremely rare. He said it seems more likely that the Corps might modify the permit in the coming weeks to satisfy the agency’s concerns.

The Corps of Engineers, which oversees construction along the nation’s wetlands and waterways, announced in April that it intends to grant Pamo a permit, having concluded that the benefits of the project outweighed the environmental harm.

But under federal law, the EPA and Fish and Wildlife Service may appeal such decisions by asking that they be “elevated” to a higher level of the Army for review. Both agencies filed such requests this summer. Late Wednesday, Doyle decided to reject them.

Doyle concluded that the agencies’ had failed to meet the required criteria for “elevation.” Those criteria are that a national policy issue needs to be resolved or there has been insufficient interagency coordination, or new information has arisen.

The agencies had argued that there was an unresolved national policy issue--the question of who has the last word on whether a project will harm an endangered species. Critics fear the Pamo project will do irreparable damage to the least Bell’s vireo, an endangered songbird.

David Barrows, an assistant to Doyle in Washington, said Thursday the agencies are already discussing the question, so Doyle concluded it does not have to be resolved before the Pamo permit can be granted.

But Doyle ordered the Los Angeles district to consider the Fish and Wildlife Service’s view that the proposed permit omits 360 acres of land that the San Diego County Water Authority had agreed to use as “mitigation” to compensate for environmental damage.

Theodore Durst, a regulatory assistant for the Corps in Los Angeles, said Thursday that the omission was unintentional: “That was essentially an inadvertent omission and will be put back in. That is not an area of dispute.”

Doyle also ordered the district to consider a recent EPA report that concludes that there are less-expensive and less-damaging alternatives to Pamo. The Water Authority, the project’s sponsor, contends that the alternatives are unfeasible.

“With the exception of the report from the EPA, the record is complete,” said Barrows, the assistant to Doyle. “Unless there is some compelling reason within that report for (the district engineer) to revise his decision, I would expect that it would stand.”

The earlier decision, announced in April, was made by Col. Fred Butler, the district engineer at the time. Kranzler said Ono replaced Butler in July as part of the Corps’ policy of three-year tours of duty.

The Pamo project would consist of a 264-foot-high concrete dam across Santa Ysabel Creek and a 1,800-acre reservoir filling Pamo Valley. A companion project would reclaim treated waste water and replenish groundwater supplies in the nearby San Pasqual Valley.