Mendocino revives Eel River water plan
Piping spring flow from Dos Rios to reservoir could run afoul of Wild and Scenic Rivers Act
Published: Friday, October 12, 2007 at 3:49 a.m.
Last Modified: Thursday, October 11, 2007 at 9:00 p.m.
A decade after Mendocino County Supervisor John Pinches first proposed piping water from a protected portion of the Eel River to as far south as Ukiah, the much maligned plan is getting a little financial support.
The Board of Supervisors last month voted 3-2 to spend up to $50,000 to study taking water from the main fork of the Eel River near Dos Rios during early spring high-river flows.
But the proposal continues to draw fire from other local officials and environmentalists, who say it's ill-advised and illegal to try to divert a significant amount of water from that part of the river, which has both state and federal designations as "wild and scenic."
"They would have a huge fight ahead of them," said Nadananda, of Friends of the Eel River, who goes by the single name.
"It's a waste of money," said Richard Shoemaker, a former supervisor and member of the Russian River Flood Control and Water Conservation Improvement District board, which holds Mendocino County's right to Russian River water stored in Lake Mendocino.
He said the county's money would be better spent elsewhere, including projects that would increase water storage capacity.
The criticisms are echoes of those rendered when the proposal was introduced. At the time, its few supporters included the Redwood Valley County Water District, which has been under a water hookup moratorium for 18 years. The district pursued a water rights application on the Eel River, but it was dropped for lack of support from other agencies.
Pinches said he believes his plan will receive more support this time around because water has become a more scarce commodity.
Pinches' current version of the plan calls for piping an undetermined amount of water about 45 miles along the railroad right-of-way from Dos Rios to Lake Mendocino at an estimated cost of $180 million to $230 million.
The water would be used to top off Lake Mendocino in low rainfall years, said Pinches, who was re-elected to the board last year following an eight-year absence.
The plan is to take water from the Eel River in the spring, when melting snow has the river roiling, Pinches said.
The so-called Dos Rios Project study will include an exploration of whether it's possible to get a license to take large quantities of water from a river designated as wild and scenic, said Roland Sanford, director of the county's water agency.
It appears the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act allows water to be taken for domestic use by residents living adjacent to the river, but piping it elsewhere in large quantities is delving into unchartered waters, he said.
"It would be precedent-setting," Sanford said.
Nadananda said the proposal is so unlikely to succeed that her group, Friends of the Eel, doesn't expect to challenge the action in court.
"Nobody has succeeded in breaking the Wild and Scenic (Rivers) Act," she said.
The proposal has practical as well as legal problems, Shoemaker said.
It would require approval of the Army Corps of Engineers, which manages the reservoir primarily for flood-control purposes until late spring. Water storage is not the corps' responsibility, Shoemaker said.
The lake cannot be filled to capacity unless the corps is certain no big rainstorms are on the horizon, he said.
In addition, the county's biggest water issue is storage capacity, not a shortage of water. Most years, there's plenty of water in the Russian River during the winter and early spring to fill Lake Mendocino.
The problem is the lake can't hold enough water to meet the growing demands of people and wildlife, particularly now that regulations protecting fish require that a certain amount of water be kept flowing downstream, regardless of lake levels.
Pinches is undaunted by the obstacles and criticism.
"It's called looking into the future," Pinches said.
"The point of it is we're in more of a water crisis than people around here believe we are."
You can reach Staff Writer Glenda Anderson at 462-6473 or glenda.anderson@pressdemocrat.com.
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