Dam Not Essential

Today’s mail included a pamphlet from Congressman Bill Lowery largely devoted to promoting the Pamo Valley Dam, an issue he frames as “The bird is important--but what about people?” While the health and safety needs of San Diego County may come ahead of the survival of an endangered vireo, I’d like to correct some of Lowery’s misleading statements.

He claims “the proposed dam . . . is essential to insure an adequate emergency fresh water supply for the city and county.” This is far from true: The Pamo Dam is only one, and the most environmentally damaging, of a number of alternatives that have been proposed. The least damaging, and perhaps the cheapest, is backed by the San Diego Sierra Club: Fill the unused capacity of the San Vicente and El Capitan reservoirs by extending existing aqueducts so they can be filled with water from the north.

Lowery reassures us with “a mitigating area three times the size of the (wetlands) area to be lost.” What he means is $4 million for planting projects, which cannot replace the habitat being destroyed until the seedlings have grown to adult trees a century hence (and the Bell’s vireo is long extinct). When did anything cost $86 million to break, but only $4 million to fix?

I know of only one objection to the San Vicente/El Capitan plan: The Pamo Dam is a bonanza for builders of lakefront resort hotels, marinas or housing projects. Most of the water, of course, will go onto avocado groves and median strips, so 15 years later we’ll “need” another expensive dam, and therefore another building spree. And more developer money in politicians’ pockets.

I’ve been to the Pamo Valley and admired the beautiful scenery, irreplaceable Native American ruins, and riparian wildlife community, unique in the county. Don’t be fooled by Lowery’s rhetoric. Don’t let this precious resource become another overdeveloped resort.

STEPHEN A. BLOCH

UC San Diego Recycling Co-op