Flood Policies at Friant Dam

In “Floods Raise Questions About Dams’ Policies” (Jan. 25) you wrote that federal dam operators “stockpiled” irrigation water rather than make room for the upcoming New Year’s storm. We spent more than five hours on the phone with one of your reporters going over the inflow, storage and releases at the Bureau of Reclamation’s Friant Dam in the days leading up to the storm. Those numbers showed we were operating well within prudent flood management criteria. We had over 99% of our allowable flood space available the day before Christmas, and the last official weather forecast from the Flood Operations Center in Sacramento on Dec. 23 called for no rain through New Year’s Day.

The forecast was revised on Dec. 26, and called for a monster storm. Your story quoted a hydrologist as saying if we had released water beginning on Dec. 22, we would have cleared enough space to handle the storm. Allowing someone to speculate after the fact on information that was not available at the time raises a question of fairness.

For six days before the peak flows occurred on Jan. 3, Reclamation’s releases from Friant Dam were at the maximum rate of flow provided in the Corps of Engineers flood-control criteria. To modify operation rules to release more water based on long-range forecasts would require that we accept the risk that some damages will occur unnecessarily, if forecasted storms do not materialize.

JEFFREY S. McCRACKEN

Regional Public Affairs Director

U.S. Bureau of Reclamation

Sacramento