Water Is Precious : Loss of River Valleys Deals Deadly Blow to Wildlife in County . . .

With its streams, adjacent willows, sycamores and oak woodlands, Pamo Valley in North County is an irreplaceable and high quality habitat for the plant and wildlife species that are no longer found in our urbanized river valleys to the west. Its value is enhanced by its isolation and the fact that it is surrounded by the Cleveland National Forest.

Such valleys are an endangered species. California has lost 91% of its historic riparian, or stream-side, habitat. Recently, information presented to the state Department of Fish and Game showed that nearly two-thirds of the habitat present in 1972 in San Diego County had been lost by 1986! We can no longer afford to treat riparian habitat as an expendable resource.

In acting to begin the formal procedure under the Clean Water Act that can result in overturning the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers permit for a dam in Pamo Valley, the Environmental Protection Agency is upholding federal law that protects wetlands from unnecessary destruction.

Two engineers at the Corps of Engineers’ Los Angeles District Office recommended denial of the Pamo Dam permit but backed down under pressure from their Washington office. Fortunately, EPA Regional Administrator Judith E. Ayres has a stronger backbone and, having seen Pamo Valley, understands the value of its wetlands and riparian habitat.

Since 1981, the Sierra Club has urged the San Diego County Water Authority to find an alternative to the dam to meet emergency water needs, because Pamo Valley is a treasure that should be preserved for future generations.

The federal Clean Water Act prohibits a permit from being issued to a project that will harm wetlands when a practicable alternative exists. One fact that has emerged from four years of environmental study is that there are a number of such alternatives available.

In an emergency such as an earthquake, the central and southern parts of the county would switch to its seven-month local emergency supply, leaving water in the aqueduct for the northern areas dependent on it. The Metropolitan Water District’s general manager has stated in San Diego that there is sufficient water stored south of the San Andreas fault to meet San Diego’s emergency needs, and that damage from a quake could be repaired quickly. The system was planned so that pipelines can be laid on the land surface to bypass a break in the aqueduct.

If water also is needed for seasonal demands or because of a drought, the county Water Authority, the Corps of Engineers, and the EPA all said that improvements to the San Vicente Dam and Reservoir system would be a feasible alternative that would serve the same communities as Pamo Dam. Further, EPA’s study showed that the costs for each would about the same.

Other alternatives would cost less than Pamo Dam: emergency conservation ordinances, improvements to the existing water distribution system to increase its effectiveness, the reduction of agricultural and landscape water use during emergencies and pumping from groundwater basins.

Finally, after the year 2000, the Metropolitan Water District plans to raise the dam of one of its reservoirs in Riverside County to add 1 million acre-feet of stored imported water--10 times what Pamo Reservoir would hold. Also in Riverside County, the Rancho California Municipal Water District is making plans to use an underground basin with the capacity to store 2.5 million acre-feet of local and imported water to supply adjacent North San Diego County communities.

At what point does the reliability of the region’s emergency water supply become more important than insisting on a particular way of achieving that reliability? Those who believe that Pamo Dam should be built must recognize that, because of appeals, lawsuits by either side, and new legal requirements that new habitats for endangered species be established before existing ones can be destroyed, completion of Pamo Dam is 8 to 10 years away.

It would be in the best interest of the residents of San Diego County for the water authority and the City of San Diego to accept reality and move on to find other ways to meet emergency water needs--ways that are less environmentally destructive and that can be achieved in less time than Pamo Dam.