Renew license at New Exchequer

The Merced Irrigation District's proposal to make room for more wet-year storage capacity in Lake McClure appears to be headed for a loud and shrill debate — what has become the norm for water issues in California.

Hints of the hyperbole were evident Tuesday, during and after a congressional committee hearing in Washington, D.C. No vote was taken on H.R. 869, introduced by Rep. Jeff Denham, R-Atwater. Votes by the House and, if it approves the legislation, the Senate, likely won't occur until later this year or in 2012.

The bill would allow the Merced district to incorporate the lake expansion proposal in its application for relicensing with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. The relicensing process will be a thorough and intense review of the New Exchequer Dam powerhouse and related facilities at Lake McClure, weighing the benefits and disadvantages of them all. (A similar review is getting started with the Don Pedro powerhouse, operated by the Turlock and Modesto irrigation districts.)

The Merced district proposes to modify the spillway gates at New Exchequer Dam so that it can capture up to 70,000 additional acre-feet in Lake McClure during wet years, such as this one.

The project would would cost an estimated $40 million, which would be paid for by the irrigation district and its water customers. Denham and other proponents emphasize that no state or federal tax dollars would be involved.

But some of Denham's language is undoubtedly leaving people with the impression that this project is an answer to the water shortage affecting so many farmers on the west side and south end of the San Joaquin Valley. It's not. This is a project for the Merced Irrigation District which, like the Modesto and Turlock districts, has not experienced the dire critical water shortages felt elsewhere. The three irrigation districts have been blessed with ample snowpack in recent years, and none depends on allocations of water from the San Joaquin Delta.

Just as prone to overstatement are the environmentalists, who suggest that raising the spillway will ruin the Merced as a wild and scenic river and set a bad precedent for other protected rivers.

Current estimates are that in the years in which storage is increased — and for the two months when the lake level would be high — the water would inundate about a half-mile of the 122 miles of the Merced River that fall under wild and scenic status.

If H.R. 869 passes, then the spillway project will be thoroughly analyzed as part of the powerhouse relicensing process. The opponents and proponents will get their opportunity to speculate, but better yet there should be more objective analysis of the cost, the damage and the offsets. The district will have to relocate any campgrounds that are affected, for instance, and should expect to provide other mitigations.

We support the relicensing of New Exchequer and believe this spillway project makes sense as a way to increase water storage, which would be a small piece in the larger water challenges facing California. More important, it should be discussed in reasonable and sensible terms. But that doesn't seem to be the way water issues are dealt with in California.

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