Drive to Demolish Big Dam Unleashes Flood of Anger

Dave Munro is loath to lose his lake. But it could happen. After a few years of haggling and a flotilla of studies, water authorities just might pull the plug on Englebright Lake, drain it like a bathtub.

That prospect has Munro, marina owner at the foothills reservoir 50 miles northeast of Sacramento, understandably aghast. If the waters departed, Munro’s livelihood would be sunk, along with his tidy harbor hosting 300 houseboats and three generations of hospitality. Try to dynamite Englebright Dam, Munro promises only half in jest, and he’ll chain all 6 feet, 6 inches of himself to it.

But water officials have compelling reasons--among them the needs of a thirsty state--to look hard at Englebright and its 260-foot-tall dam. For half a century, the arching concrete structure, a sort of half-pint Hoover Dam, has blocked migration of both steelhead trout and salmon up the Yuba River to the cold Sierra streams and pools where they spawn.

As a result, the fish are faltering. Their decline, water authorities fear, could crimp the ability to tap Northern California tributaries in future drought years for water pumped to the Central Valley and Southern California.

Experts say that the best way to boost the fish populations is to get them back into stretches of Central Valley streams blocked by dams like Englebright.

The hubbub comes amid a growing nationwide debate over dams. From the rivers of Maine to Malibu Creek, dams are under increasing scrutiny because of the barrier they pose for everything from fish to the flow of sand out onto beaches. The top targets across the country are what some dub “deadbeat dams,” structures so archaic they have arguably outlived their intended purpose or begun to decay.

“We don’t advocate removal of every dam, not even most dams,” said Margaret Bowman of American Rivers, a national conservation organization. “The real numbers are in small dams that don’t serve a useful purpose any longer. Many are abandoned. And most block fish.”

Indeed, nearly all the dams downed so far have been relative pipsqueaks. Small dams have been removed in Vermont, Wisconsin and North Carolina. Out west, three tiny dams were toppled last year on Butte Creek in Northern California to aid salmon and steelhead.

Bigger dams like Englebright also are being eyed. While a pair on the salmon-depleted Elwha River in Washington State appear destined to fall, a pitched battle continues over four dams blocking the migration route of fish up the Columbia and Snake rivers. Environmentalists also vow to tackle upward of 500 hydroelectric dams nationwide coming up for license renewals in the next dozen years, including 50 in California.

Reversal of Dam Building

Such moves are a stark reversal from America’s past. Since the days of the Revolution, we have been a dam-building people, erecting 75,000 nationwide. California has more than 1,200 dams taller than 25 feet.

“There’s just an inexplicable attachment to dams on the part of Westerners,” said Marc Reisner, author of “Cadillac Desert,” which detailed the West’s water wars. “They’re our churches. In an arid landscape, the idea of a dam alters the nature of the universe out here. And the nature of the universe out here is pretty hostile.”

As such, the task of downing a dam--politely referred to as “decommissioning” in bureaucratic circles--can seem as impossible as a free climb up the 754-foot face of Oroville Dam, the nation’s tallest.

Look no further than the fight over Englebright.

The lake’s boosters have bared knuckles, determined to dynamite any effort even to study the prospects of decommissioning the dam.

“We’ve become the poster-boy issue for some of the environmental folks who want to take down a big dam,” said Munro, the bearded and bearish owner of Skippers Cove Marina. “They’ve taken down small ones, but they’d like a big one. I just think they’ve chosen the wrong one.”

Englebright Dam was built in 1941 for one purpose: To catch silt that was cascading down the Yuba watershed after several decades of hydraulic mining in the waning days of the Gold Rush. Englebright has served that function quite well, with about 100 feet of sediment pooled at the dam’s base.

Meanwhile, it has become home port for an armada of watercraft dotting the 11-mile-long lake. Two power plants generate enough electricity for 60,000 homes. Englebright also helps catch water cascading out of Bullards Bar Reservoir, particularly when its huge upstream hydropower dam jacks up releases to produce more electricity in peak summer months.

And by sending a consistent flow of water downstream even in dry months, Englebright Dam has helped make the lower Yuba among the better fisheries in the state.

But the dam also is a roadblock to fish migrating upstream, where the Yuba breaks into three forks and countless smaller tributaries. While some fish have adapted, two endangered varieties--the spring run Chinook salmon and steelhead trout--need access to the cold pools of the upper river to effectively spawn.

Agencies that send water south fear being forced to reduce pumping during weeks that the juvenile salmon or steelhead are heading out to sea, lest the fish be sucked up and killed. To keep water flowing, authorities want to take steps to improve odds of survival as the fish journey past the pumps.

A collection of 15 state and federal agencies, dubbed the CalFed Bay-Delta Program, has been working since 1995 to restore upward of 600 miles of salmon and steelhead habitat. Water from that region flows into the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, where it is pumped to other parts of the state.

CalFed first targeted Englebright a year ago and is now preparing for an environmental study on how best to return fish to the upper reaches of the river.

Among the options are trapping and trucking fish around the dam. Authorities also are looking at using adjacent streams to let fish circumvent the dam and lake. Other possibilities include lowering the height of the dam and building a fish ladder or punching a hole in its base to create a “dry dam,” which would let the river run unimpeded except in rainy months.

The last, and most drastic, is eliminating the dam completely. Authorities would love to avoid such a step, but admit that it is on the table. “Anything we can do that most closely replicates the pre-dam natural process is desirable,” said Dick Daniel, CalFed’s assistant director for ecosystem restoration.

All the ideas have potential pitfalls. Trapping has been used to skirt dams on the Pacific Northwest’s Columbia River, but with only limited success. Circumventing the lake could prove physically impossible or too costly. Environmentalists say fish ladders historically don’t work well.

And taking down the dam or punching a hole in it might be too pricey. The Yuba County Water Agency, which opposes removing the dam, puts the cost at more than $450 million, most of it to compensate for the loss of hydroelectric power and recreational use.

Marina’s Visitors

Munro says the lake draws up to 250,000 visitors a year, the bulk of them boaters who crowd the launch ramps or steer two-story houseboats onto the dappled waters.

“I raised both my boys here,” said Don Whipple, who visits his houseboat on the lake at least 45 weekends a year. “They’re grown and come up here now with their kids. I can’t imagine not having this.”

Larry Lyons, a maintenance worker at the lake, has built his two-story houseboat from the water up, replete with knotty pine paneling and other cozy touches. “It would be physically impossible to move this boat, just like most all the others,” he said. “I’d have to take a chain saw and cut the top half off and throw it away.”

Above the lake, the couple dozen homeowners who command soaring views of the water and steep, oak-studded canyon sides are no less anxious. If the dam goes, they say, their lake view would be replaced by a mudhole.

Environmentalists are like “this grizzly bear who has a hold of something and won’t let loose of it,” said Tom Borden, a homeowner above the lake since 1991. “I’m genuinely scared now that it’s gotten this far.”

Downstream residents are worried too. In Marysville and Yuba City, which straddle the confluence of the Yuba and Feather rivers, citizens worry that removal of Englebright would send silt cascading their way. That would raise the river bottom in town and raise the risk for a region that has already suffered through three catastrophic floods, including one on New Year’s Day 1997.

Environmentalists say such talk is simply fear mongering, and no plan would ever go forward that increases flood risk downstream. They also insist that the stakes are too great to not at least study all possible ways to help the fish.

With the dam in place, “it’s not a natural system right now,” said Maureen Rose of Friends of the River, a Sacramento-based river conservation group. “Those house boaters are using a river that has been lost, most importantly to the native fish species that need it for survival. I think that outweighs a small population of house boaters.”

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Endangered California Dams

Environmentalists want several dams in California removed in hopes of reviving sagging stocks of salmon and steelhead. Shown here are the top targets.

(1) McCormick-Saeltzer Dam

(2) Wildcat, Eagle Canyon and Coleman dams

(3) Clough Dam

(4) Centerville Dam

(5) Englebright and Daguerra Point dams

(6) Floriston Dam

(7) El Dorado Dam

(8) Fairview Dam

(9) Rindge Dam

(10) Matilija Dam

Source: Friends of the River