San Joaquin Threat

The San Joaquin River

The San Joaquin River is threatened by a plan to build Temperance Flat Dam.

The San Joaquin & Temperance Dam

(The latest: The Temperance Flat Reservoir Authority and the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation have suspended active work on the proposed Temperance Flat dam, although the Authority's officials and southern San Joaquin Valley Congressmen continue to promote the dam while they wait for a more favorable taxpayer subsidy environment and Presidential administration.)

Temperance Flat Dam would flood an incredible river gorge that the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) recommended for Wild & Scenic River protection in 2014.

Despite the enormous price tag of at least $2.6 billion, according to the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation for its preferred alternative, the dam would only yield 70,000 acre-feet of water per year on average. That's less than 0.2% of California's annual water use. The 665-foot dam would be the second highest in California and it would be built at the upper end of Millerton Reservoir—literally creating a reservoir within a reservoir. For a river that already doesn't flow to the sea in most years, this project just doesn't pass the laugh test, but the destruction it would cause is no laughing matter.

Bottom Line: This project would waste billions of public dollars to destroy an amazing river gorge for a tiny drop in the bucket.

The San Joaquin River & Gorge

The second largest river in California, the San Joaquin flows from the crest of the high Sierra westward towards the rich valley and then the river bed, if not the river itself, meanders north to the delta.

The San Joaquin River Gorge has outstanding scenery, class IV-V whitewater rapids, an extensive trail system, two public campgrounds, an environmental education center, and a natural and cultural history museum that attract thousands of visitors to the San Joaquin River Gorge every year. The public lands in and surrounding the Gorge provide habitat for 11 sensitive, threatened, and endangered wildlife species. In addition, the dam will drown the unique Millerton Cave System, perhaps the world’s best example of a granite cave carved by a year-round flowing underground stream.

The natural and cultural values of the Gorge are so outstanding that the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) recommended Wild & Scenic River protection for more than five miles of the San Joaquin River Gorge in 2012, completing its Record of Decision in 2014. All the natural values in the Gorge and its Wild & Scenic River potential would be lost and many of its recreation amenities and visitor services would be degraded or require relocation if the Temperance Flat Dam were built.

The Threat: Temperance Flat Dam

The Bureau of Reclamation (BOR, the Bureau, or Reclamation) and local water districts are proposing to build yet another huge dam on the San Joaquin River, claiming that this dam will actually benefit salmon and the environment. But many conservation, fishing, and recreational groups believe that the new proposed dam is simply business as usual for those who believe dams on already dried-up rivers are the solution to profligate water waste and misuse in the southern Central Valley—which means the San Joaquin River and its salmon restoration program are at risk.

Long regarded as the craziest big-dam idea in California (for more than half a century, until the San Joaquin River restoration effort began to achieve results, the existing dams and canals totally dried up the San Joaquin River downstream of Fresno in most years), the project to squeeze the last pittance of water from the river is enthusiastically backed by local politicians who successfully fought for billions of dollars for this and other dams in the 2014 California Water Bond (Proposition 1). In fact, they held the bond hostage in the California legislature until funding for the dam was made possible (although not certain) in the bond.

In 2000, the Calfed Bay-Delta Program Record of Decision identified the proposed Temperance Flat Dam as requiring additional planning and feasibility studies under the beneficiaries-pay concept before it could be advanced to a recommendation stage. In 2004, Public Law 108-361 authorized these studies. Ten years later, in 2014, BOR completed a draft feasibility report and environmental impact statement for the project. It identified a preferred but not recommended alternative, the Temperance Flat dam.

BOR even admits in its draft environmental impact statement (DEIS) that the loss of the Gorge beneath the still waters of the Temperance Flat reservoir is a significant, unavoidable impact. According to the DEIS, the dam would also significantly and unavoidably impact air quality, fisheries, riparian habitat, wildlife, cultural resources, soils, land use, noise, recreation, and scenery. Cumulatively, Temperance Flat would contribute to the continued violation of water quality standards in the San Joaquin River. In addition, the dam will actually be a net loser in terms of hydroelectric power because it will flood two existing PG&E hydroelectric plants.

The Temperance Flat Dam would be 665 feet high (the second highest dam in California) with a storage capacity of more than 1.3 million acre feet of water. But the dam was modeled in the DEIS to yield only about 61,000-87,000 acre-feet of water per year on average, depending on how it is operated. That’s about 0.166% of California’s annual water supply and about 1% of all the water that Reclamation delivers in its giant Central Valley Project. Because of the dams and reservoirs that already capture most of the flow of the San Joaquin River, the reservoir behind the Temperance Flat Dam would only store water one year out of three (assuming it could get the water rights to do it). That last caveat may be important because a recent U.C. Davis study found that the state has over-allocated water rights in the San Joaquin River by an astounding 861%, which brings into question whether the Bureau could get the right capture enough water behind the Temperance Flat Dam to make it worthwhile. More importantly, no more water rights are available at their points of diversion on this river according to California water law.

Despite increased public concern about the collapse of groundwater aquifers in the southern Central Valley due to over-pumping by agribusiness and cities, the Temperance Flat Dam will do little to solve this problem. Given the scale of the overpumping in the south Valley (two million acre-feet per year), only meaningfully reducing the groundwater pumping can solve this problem. Of course, this solution is not popular with southern San Joaquin Valley farmers. When the legislature proposed and ultimately passed the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act in 2014, the California Farm Bureau Federation led the opposition, warning that it would lead to cutbacks in groundwater use in the southern San Joaquin Valley. (It would, but so would the inexorable arithmetic of pumping a lot more groundwater than is recharged).

Rather than cut back on groundwater use, the southern San Joaquin Valley interests are proposing the San Joaquin Valley Blueprint: build the Temperance Flat Dam, expand water storage at San Luis Reservoir and build two new nearby reservoirs, and enlarge and build canals from the state and federal aqueducts on the west side of the Valley to the Valley's east side—and expand pumping from the beleaguered Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta by roughly 50%.

In 2014, BOR estimated that it would cost $2.6 billion to build Temperance Flat Dam (a departure from earlier higher estimates). Although the biggest boosters of the dam are southern Central Valley agribusiness (although others may be first in line for the water), the BOR claims that nearly half of the dam’s cost will be allocated to taxpayers who will receive “public benefits” in the form of increased salmon production in the San Joaquin River downstream of the dam. But the BOR’s own models of salmon improvements provided by the dam are a paltry .4% to 2.8% (again depending on how the dam is operated). Two of the BOR’s five dam operation scenarios are modeled to reduce salmon downstream in the river by -.6% to -13.1%! Why should taxpayers pay for an actual reduction in salmon in a river that we have been working to restore for more than 20 years?

In order for the dam to receive funding from the $2.7 billion given to California Water Commission's Proposition 1 chapter-8 program, the San Joaquin Valley Water Infrastructure Authority was formed. It consists of cities, counties, local water districts (including the Westlands Water District) in the San Joaquin Valley from Merced County south. It prepared an incomplete draft environmental impact report that it submitted to the Water Commission in 2017, revising the cost estimate to $2.8 billion (in 2020 estimated at $3.2 billion for capital costs). The Authority also hoped to benefit from reconstructed and expanded canal infrastructure (funded by a $750 million line item in Propostion 3, a water bond on the 2018 California November general election ballot that was narrowly defeated) that would have allowed the Temperance Flat dam to conduct coordinated operations with the San Joaquin Valley Corps of Engineers dams to the north and south of it, as well as with the BOR/Department of Water Resources San Luis Dam to the west across the Valley. The Authority believes that this could increase deliveries from Temperance Flat dam and allow the dam to market its water to a larger area. It busied itself with lining up "partners" to help defray the capital and operational costs of the dam.

The federal Omnibus Appropriations bill passed in early 2018 contained funds projected to allow the completion or near completion of BOR's final feasibility report and environmental impact statement. The Authority believed that these documents would contain this new locally preferred alternative that could emerge as the recommended alternative.

The Authority requested $1.068 billion of California Water Bond funds from the Water Commission. In May of 2018, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife told the Water Commission that the Authority had been unable to demonstrate any net benefit for salmon from its project. By a narrow margin, the Commission accepted the Department's conclusion, which limited (by statute and regulation) the maximum conditional funding allocation that could be reserved for the Authority. The Authority would be limited to at most $171.3 million in public funds from the Commission (approximately 6 or 7% of total pre-cost-overrun projected dam costs). The Authority's 2017 submissions to the Commission estimate the dam will cost $2.8 billion, although cost overruns are routine on these kinds of projects.

After the Commission's July 2018 meeting that confirmed the Authority's eligibility for only $171.3 million dollars but denied the Authority early funding for EIR and permitting, the Authority's general manager announced their intention to go to Washington DC for funding. He said they would seek to modify the WIIN, presumably to eliminate the up-front cost-sharing requirement, the requirement to follow state and federal law, and add additional funding authority so that federal taxpayers can pay for the majority of the dam's costs.

In the meantime, at the same time the Department of the Interior appeared to have made at least a preliminary decision to "authorize" the Temperance Flat Dam (presumably contingent on the completion of the final feasibility report) under the authority of the Water Infrastructure Improvements for the Nation Act of 2016 (WIIN; the Administration sought study funding under a WIIN funding request). This statute requires at least a 50% up-front non-federal contribution to help financing a federal dam. It also requires compliance with federal and state law, although, given recent events with the proposed WIIN Shasta Dam raise, attempts to ignore or change cost-sharing and compliance requirements with existing federal and state law should be expected from elements in the Congress and in the future by Reclamation under another Administration.

But there was trouble back home.The Friant Water Authority, a joint powers authority that represents a million acres of irrigation districts along the east side of the southern San Joaquin Valley, led the effort to form a new joint powers authority to manage the Temperance Flat Dam, the Temperance Flat Reservoir Authority (TFRA). After elbowing aside the San Joaquin Valley Water Infrastructure Authority, the TFRA took a fresh look at the project, focusing on optimizing the Reclamation Friant Project San Joaquin River deliveries by integrating project operations with Army Corps of Engineers dams on rivers that are crossed by the Friant-Kern Canal, plus the state and federal water projects on the west side of the San Joaquin Valley.

This is complicated to put together, with the first step being to reconstruct the Friant-Kern Canal damaged by groundwater overpumping by area farmers. Friant's priority is to seek federal subsidies for this project (the Friant Water Authority has the contractual responsibility to make repairs from its own funds). Press reports say that in March 2020, later confirmed in October 2020, the TFRA asked the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation to defer completion of Reclamation's 2014 feasibility report for three to five years, presumably to give them time to develop such a project.

If Reclamation complies with their request, this could mean that the dam project would become ineligible for WIIN or Proposition 1 funding because of missed statutory deadlines. However, the TFRA expects that the Temperance Flat dam and the extensive canal infrastructure it also wishes to build would be eligible for subsidies in the proposed successor to the WIIN, Senator Feinstein's S. 1932, the DRWSIA. The new and modified canal infrastructure (part of the San Joaquin Valley Blueprint) makes the Temperance Flat dam more cost-effective according to TFRA (assuming the infrastructure is heavily subsidized).

On July 15, 2002, the California Water Commission decided to seek approval for emergency regulations to allow for a second round of applications and potential approvals of "early" funding requests. The TFRA could apply for as much as $8.5 million dollars to fund an environmental impact report and permitting.

On October 21, 2020, the TFRA made a presentation to the California Water Commission. It told the commissioners that it had been unable to find enough investors in the project to finance it and thus define expected operations of the dam. It bumped up the capital cost estimate to $3.2 billion. The commissioners were told that the TFRA had asked Reclamation to place the Reclamation's pending final EIS in deferral status. It also told the commissioners that it was likely that the TFRA would be unable to meet the Commission's January 1, 2022, deadline and that the Commission should distribute their provisionally allocated funds to some other project to benefit the southern San Joaquin Valley.

They did tell the commissioners that the southern San Joaquin water districts still want to build the Temperance Flat dam; it will just take a few more years to get there—something that friends of the San Joaquin River Gorge will have to strive to prevent.

On October 30, 2020, the TFRA adopted a resolution to withdraw their request for a funding allocation from the Commission, a request that was accepted.

Of course that it not the end. According to a July 29, 2021, Fresno Bee news article, Former San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer made a stop in Fresno on Wednesday to plead his case on why he’s a key candidate in the potential recall of Gov. Gavin Newsom.

Faulconer’s talking points during the visit consisted almost entirely of the state’s water woes as he stood outside the Department of Water Resources office in central Fresno, where he was accompanied by Fresno County Supervisor Buddy Mendes.