August 28, 2017 – NID can’t have it both ways. The District simply can’t promise locals that Centennial Dam water will be used within the District to secure the local water supply and then turn around and offer to sell the water to the Central Valley Project/State Water Project (CVP/SWP). But that is exactly what is happening. Two recent actions by NID call to question their purpose and intentions for the water behind Centennial Dam.
At the August 9 special Board meeting, NID Directors approved application for Proposition 1 funding for Centennial Dam with an August 14 deadline, voting without any supporting information in their meeting packet or information available to the public. That State funding is expressly for ecosystem benefits for the Delta. Accepting State funds commits NID to California Water Commission requirements. For three years, NID has been promoting the dam for local water security, promising the water would be used locally, which is a proud, long-standing NID policy.
Also revealed by the public at the August 9 meeting and of even greater concern, NID is broadcasting a completely different message statewide than it delivers locally. NID co-funded with Metropolitan Water District of Southern California and others the “Storage Integration Study” released in June 2017 by the Association of California Water Agencies (ACWA). NID Board members had not been informed of the details or conclusions of the report which states that Centennial Dam will be integrated into the CVP/SWP system that delivers water to Southern California.
The study shows that Centennial water storage over 40,000 acre-feet—-fully 2/3 of the water behind the dam— is “available for [State] system-wide needs” and can be used to “augment American River supplies,” “provide water supply reliability to urban water users”, “enhance temperature conditions in the lower American River”, “conserve storage in Shasta”, “contribute water supply benefits to the CVP/SWP system… including Delta exports”, “augment the flow in the lower Bear below Camp Far West and the Feather river”, and “conserve storage levels in Oroville Reservoir.”
(https://www.acwa.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/2017-06-05-ACWA-Integrated-Storage-Final-Report.pdf pages 34-36)
What in the world is going on here? Does this mean the water is ultimately for Southern California? As the venerable Placer County Water Agency attorney used to tell us on the PCWA Board, “Don’t ever sell water to Southern California and let urban users become dependent on our water, because we’ll never get it back when we need it.” What are NID’s intentions here? Does this mean that our local NID Board members are actually enabling the long-dreaded raid on Sierra Nevada county-of-origin water by LA and San Diego? This clearly undermines our local sustainable water supply. Is this what NID ratepayers are going into debt for?
NID needs to be transparent— and that means more than just how to video stream their meetings. Transparency is not just a video selfie. Once accessible to the public, the District needs to publicly debate these issues and have clear policies. And the public needs to follow the money. NID is a public agency, and it is the public that owns the water and power. It is the public that ultimately will incur the debt. The Board’s responsibility is to frame the critical issues and policies, debate them in public, and make the issues crystal clear. It’s time to come clean… because you can’t have it both ways.
Otis Wollan President
American Rivers Watershed Institute (ARWI)
Thank you for highlighting the duplicity of the NID staff and board of directors. I wonder if the staff and directors telling the public multiple stories concerning the proposed dam causes them to have headaches. They seem to do it with ease and, as you point out, without any staff reports to inform the board and public what they are up to.
We need to keep attending the board meetings and asking the staff and directors the hard questions concerning the proposed dam and other district operations until we get consistent answers.