U.S. Selling Off Dams; Naturalists Are Critical

The Island Park Dam is a monument to the kind of engineering and manpower that can make farms out of deserts.

It holds back 135,000 acre-feet of snowmelt and rainwater. It feeds the best trout stream in the country, Henry’s Fork. Its water irrigates 150,000 acres of some of the best potato farmland in the country. Its flow joins one of the great rivers of the American West, the Snake.

Now, after 63 years of controlling the tap in eastern Idaho, the federal Bureau of Reclamation is negotiating the sale of the multimillion-dollar dam and a network of related facilities--for a mere $270,000.

If the transfer goes through, a farmer-run irrigation district will take title to Island Park and two smaller dams and control of all water flow on the Henry’s Fork and tributary streams whose waters are coveted by anglers, boaters and conservation interests.

That shift of power from the federal government to local landowners--spelled out in a blueprint slowly gaining support in Congress--is raising fears among those who see preservation of the status quo as one way to protect the environment.

“Water is as public a resource as the air we breathe,” said Marti Bridges of the environmental group Idaho Rivers United. “It’s like having some industry say, ‘We need all the air. You only get 10%, but it’s enough for you to survive on.’ It gets down to a quality-of-life issue.”

The record of the Bureau of Reclamation for protecting Idaho’s fish and wildlife is not unblemished. In 1989, 1,500 swans and tens of thousands of fish died over the winter when low flows out of Island Park Dam iced up the Henry’s Fork. In 1992, the bureau drew down the reservoir so far that it sent tons of sediment down the river, killing thousands of fish.

“The bureau essentially does the will of the irrigators right now,” said Janice Brown of the conservation-minded Henry’s Fork Foundation. “What we’re saying is that the status quo in our mind is not adequate, regardless of who owns the title.”

Other conservation groups have opposed any compromise, fearing the irrigation district would be free to ignore the demands of other users after it takes title to the dams.

“This is the Wild West, and private property rules all,” said Marv Hoyt of the Greater Yellowstone Coalition. “If it’s your dam, your water, you do what you want with it, and there’s no recourse.”

Two hundred fifty-four dams, 347 storage reservoirs, 25,000 miles of canals and pipelines and more than 37,000 miles of distribution laterals have been built across 17 Western states by the Bureau of Reclamation since 1902 in an engineering campaign unrivaled since the days of the Roman Empire.

Up to 65 Districts Are Interested

Fortresses like Hoover and Grand Coulee dams are part of the mystique of the West. The majority, however, are relatively small irrigation and power workhorses that together are capable of delivering 30 million acre-feet of water and 42 billion kilowatt-hours of power annually.

But government-wide cost cutting has left the bureau unable to pay for operations, maintenance and safety improvements, raising questions about how long it can afford to preside over its empire.

At least 65 local irrigation districts have expressed interest in taking over facilities, many of which they already run and maintain under contracts with the bureau that average 25% reductions in cost.

A few, including districts in San Diego and Burley, Idaho, already have taken over ownership--a move that irrigators believe will assure them more control over river flows.

“The federal government, whenever they do anything, it costs more than a private entity,” said Dale Swensen, executive director of the water district that is seeking to take over the Island Park Dam. “We want to have control over our . . . destiny, whatever that is.”

Bureau officials insist the transfer contract will require the irrigators to assume full legal liability, guarantee dam safety and provide protections for fish and wildlife. But an increasing number of landowners are trying to negotiate deals directly with Congress instead.

“When this whole thing started, most farmers and ranchers were interested in taking over these projects in order to do an end run around federal environmental laws,” said Bruce Driver, head of the Land and Water Fund of the Rockies. “They saw the possibility that if they hold title to these facilities, they won’t have to be bothered by the Endangered Species Act because these are no longer federal projects.”

Water rights are determined by a complex weave of state laws and court decisions. While landowners may not harm endangered wildlife, they do not have the government’s obligation to take aggressive measures to restore a species.

In California, irrigators are seeking to take over the Sly Park reservoir and three dams near Placerville, small parts of the massive Central Valley Project, which supplies water to 2.5 million Californians and 20,000 farms. The proposed transfer would allow the local district to use water from the federal project to irrigate new orchards.

The transfer also would give the district water that could be diverted from agriculture to supply residential development contemplated in the suburbs of Sacramento. The law now prohibits using federal water for that.

The Carlsbad Irrigation District in New Mexico wants to take over diversion facilities on the Pecos River, habitat of the endangered bluntnose shiner. The district stands to gain at least $250,000 a year in oil and gas royalties.

In Idaho, where the Bureau of Reclamation has constructed more facilities than in any other state, a water war is shaping up over preservation of endangered salmon on the Snake River. In addition to proposals to breach four major dams on the lower Snake, federal authorities are looking at the possibility of increasing the Snake River flow by an additional 1 million acre-feet of water.

The release would dry up an estimated 643,000 acres of farmland in southern Idaho, resulting in $81.4 million in lost farm income. It takes four acre-feet to irrigate one acre of farmland in the southern Idaho region covered by the Fremont Madison water district, according to director Swensen.

In addition to the environmental concerns, critics contend that the transfers are federal tax giveaways.

Irrigation districts in many cases have paid for the construction costs of the facilities they propose to take over--but most often there have been substantial subsidies. Of $7.1 billion in irrigation projects built over the last 92 years, irrigators have been asked to pay $3.4 billion and actually have paid a little less than $1 billion, according to the General Accounting Office.

$270,000 Is Called a Fair Price

The Fremont-Madison Irrigation District proposes taking over three dams--including Island Park--that would cost millions to replace, for only $270,591. That’s fair, the district says, because it already has paid back the government’s construction costs. But critics point out that most reclamation facilities were financed with interest-free loans and other tax subsidies that ought to be taken into account.

“We think we’ve put together a fair way of handling the financial obligations,” said Steve Richardson, chief of staff for the bureau. “We’re going to insist that all the things that the taxpayers paid for are either maintained or repaid. Of course, when people [in the irrigation districts] hear that, they’re a lot less enthusiastic.”

“The bureau built literally thousands and thousands of dams, canals, repair yards . . . and now nearly a century later, it makes absolutely no sense to have the federal government continue to own many of those facilities and be responsible for their operation and maintenance,” said Daniel P. Beard, a former bureau commissioner who is now on the board of the National Audubon Society.

“But . . . I think greed and self-interest got in the way of common sense,” Beard said. “What many of these districts did was they went to their congressman and said: ‘Pass the title transfer, but exempt us from the Endangered Species Act, exempt us from [the National Environmental Policy Act] and make sure we get it for $1.98.’ ”