How to Build a Water Empire

CHAPTER FIFTEEN How to Build a Water Empire With improved water supply Sonoma County’s development can expect to be similar to that o f Santa Clara County. — Stone and Youngberg, Consultants to the Sonoma County Water Agency, 1954 he Warm Springs Dam is a chilling example of how a publicly owned water agency was able to disenfranchise Sonoma County voters (and Ttried to do the same with Marin voters) in order to construct a dam costing $365 million— the last large dam built in California. The Warm Springs Dam had a forty-three-year gestation: it was con ceived about 1940 by the US Army Corps of Engineers for flood control and water supply. Construction was authorized in 1962 by Congress, and the dam was completed in 1983. Today the dam is a fact of life, a gigantic earthen barrier extending for half a mile across the confluence of Warm Springs Creek and Dry Creek and creating Lake Sonoma to a depth of 315 feet. The entire project includes 16,770 acres of over-cut watershed (some of it severely eroding), a modern state-run fish hatchery, splendid recreational benefits, and a well-run federal park with interpretive Pomo displays. Despite the benefits, I fought that dam tooth and nail. In my opinion, This pre-construction water-rich Sonoma didn’t need the dam, and its flood control benefits diagram of Warm couldn’t make up for the land speculation that followed in the wake of its Springs Dam shows the vast area filled to create proposal, or for the sprawling growth that followed the giant water pipelines Lake Sonoma. The south from the Russian River along Highway 101, through Sonoma and deep Dam blocks Dry Creek, into Marin. its salmon spawning grounds, and natural gravel flow, and releases Who Is Behind It? sediment-starved water, which erodes the river As the Golden Gate Bridge was nearing completion in 1937, local devel channel and silts drink opment interests began to meet with the US Army Corps of Engineers in ing w ater wells. HOW TO BUILD A WATER EMPIRE 185 F I R S T S H IP M E N T of CONCRETE AGGREGATES For GOLDEN GATE BRIDGE ffts, sn£F°ba&4ixjrock CO. AMPA- Gravel from the Russian River has been used Washington D.C. to take advantage of money available for flood control. since the 1930s for the Sonoma and Marin, being closest to the bridge, were the highest priority. bridges, freeways, and Once the Corps drew Warm Springs Dam on their maps, the dam became post-war growth of both Marin and Sonoma. a favored, but unfunded, “flood control” pork barrel for generations of Quarried rock coidd politicians. have been used instead The Corps required a local sponsor for its dams, so in 1949 the Sonoma of the enormous ton County Water Agency was chartered by the state to manage the Russian nages o f river gravel River water supply and flood control. A few years later, Gordon W. Miller, a railed and trucked from Healdsburg each year. young engineer from the Los Angeles Flood Control District, was hand- picked as the Water Agency’s manager. One of his jobs was to get Warm Springs Dam built, along with three dams on the Eel River. Miller was also a mover and shaker in an aggressive statewide lobby for big dam projects named the California Water Resources Association, formed in 1955 and based in Glendale, near Los Angeles. Miller became a director of the association representing Marin, Sonoma, Mendocino, Humboldt, Trin ity, Del Norte, Napa, and Lake counties. These counties were joined as the Eel River Water Council between 1965 and 1973, when it was disbanded. With an annual runoff of 6,300,000 acre feet of water each year, second only to the Klamath River, the Eel was the key to developing these North Coast counties as well as counties on the South Coast. 186 SAVING THE MARIN-SONOMA COAST The Council meant business. They had stunning brochures in red, white, and blue and detailed maps in full color showing dams on nearly every river. They also had a full-time executive director in addition to Gordon Miller, who seemed to run the organization. I met with Miller in 1972 in the Council’s plush Santa Rosa offices when I was a delegate representing Marin County. There I learned that traditionally water agency professionals don’t take their dam projects to the voters. They don’t need to. Miller had the full political power of the state water lobby behind him. His mentors were the engineering firms that had built the largest dams and aqueducts on Earth. As befitting an autocratic water developer from Los Angeles, Miller was noted for his white shoes and license plates reading “H 20 CZAR.” Kicking Off the Dam Project One of my great regrets at the time was not attending the kick- Gordon Miller, Chief off event for the Warm Springs Dam project held by the Army Corps on Engineer of the Sonoma March 17, 1960. Appropriately, it was held in the nearby Villa Chanticleer County Water Agency in Healdsburg. Three hundred organized supporters unanimously agreed to fro m 1957 to 1979, was the most influential urge Congress to authorize the dam for “desperately needed flood control.” water developer on the The Corps was anxious to get federal approval before opposition to this North Coast. Miller’s dinosaur mounted; there was growing public awareness that damming is the primary concern was most absolute way to destroy a river. providing sufficient My immediate reaction to news of the dam in 1960 was dismay. The water for the expected enormous growth. Army Corps had already damaged the steelhead fishery of the Russian River with the cheap construction of Coyote Dam in 1959 near Ukiah, built with neither a fish ladder nor multiple outlets for coldwater fish. There were miles of severe streambank erosion downriver from the Corps’ bulldozing and straightening the riverbed. To top it off, they had cabled huge steel jacks to hold the banks in place where they planted invasive grasses and bamboo, and the whole mess washed out in the first flood. When President Kennedy signed the Warm Springs Dam bill in 1962, it triggered the first battle to slow growth in Sonoma County, and for good reason. The “firm water supply” promised by the Corps of 115,000 acre-feet was enough to supply a population of about half a million people. Including the 160,000 acre-feet of water diverted for free each year from the Eel River, there would be plenty of water available to export 50,000 acre-feet a year to Marin by aqueduct if Marin bought into the dam. This was more water HOW TO BUILD A WATER EMPIRE 187 supply than that available in all of Marin’s lakes. I’ve already told of Marin’s political and water revolution in response to this proposal. The Corp’s Warm Springs Dam project was delayed for years by a lack of federal funding. Then in the 1970s opponents began to fight the dam with initiatives and legal challenges while its price steadily rose from an esti mated $115 million in 1962 to the final bill of $365 million in 1983. DAM CHOICE Colonel lames Lammie, District Engineer for the Corps, IN was in charge of the project. At an environmental review hearing at which I spoke against the dam, he lambasted me as “an outsider.” But there was expert testimony that the dam was not needed for water supply and that there was plenty of groundwater available for reasonable growth. The Corps, however, bamboozled the public with exag gerated flood control promises for the riverside town of Guerneville. In fact, the flood level in Guerneville in 1986, three years after the dam was built, was the highest in history due to dam-induced growth and other factors. In 1997 an official from the state Office of Emergency Services declared that the Russian River now has the distinc The voters never had tion of having the highest and costliest rate of repetitive a dam choice. They flooding west of the Mississippi— $130 million in damages in 1995 and couldn’t vote fo r or 1997 alone. against Warm Springs So much for the flood control benefits of Warm Springs Dam. Dam except by a costly referendum process that required thousands of The Warm Springs Dam Opponents signatures just to get on the ballot. Opposition to the dam was well organized and persistent beyond all expectations. The number and the talent of the people who opposed the Warm Springs Dam was astounding. I can only tell of a few here. Gail Jonas, a feisty and idealistic young woman from Healdsburg just entering law school in 1973, led the Warm Springs Dam Task Force and pitted her talents against Colonel Lammie, Gordon Miller, and the County Supervisors. Paul Kayfetz, a Bolinas attorney, flew at his own expense to Washington D.C. to obtain a writ requiring an Environmental Impact Report from Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas, and that was then signed by the entire court. Thousands of hours were volunteered by “no growthers” obtaining signatures for initiatives and getting voter turnout. Nearly all the Dry Creek Valley Association farmers I knew opposed the dam, including l 8 8 SAVING THE MARIN-SONOMA COAST leaders Warren Rossiter, Rex Holmes, Charles Richard, and Pomo Native Americans Bill and Sally Smith. Fishery experts warned that the dam would drown a quarter of all the stream miles utilized by steelhead and coho (silver) salmon for spawning in the entire Russian River watershed.

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