The dam that made waves

Warm Springs Dam, a half-mile-wide earthen berm at the head of Dry Creek Valley, dominates a landscape colored by arid hillsides of golden grass and emerald vineyards.

Built by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers at a cost of $330 million, it forms Lake Sonoma, a recreation gem for boaters, fishermen and campers, a safety net for flood-prone Guerneville and a water source for 600,000 North Bay residents.

At 25 years of age, the dam still looms over Sonoma County's political landscape as possibly the most contentious but critical public project ever undertaken.

And issues remain over how the reservoir should be managed during times of drought to provide water for the area's population while sustaining fish in the river.

"I really didn't see the need for the dam at that time. I was opposed and worked in the campaigns against it," said Sonoma County Supervisor Tim Smith, who was elected to the board five years after the dam was completed.

"Mercifully, people were a lot smarter than I was. I would hate to see where we would be now, given our water supply needs," Smith said. "Obviously, the dam is the key for our current and future water supply."

The dam was completed June 18, 1983, almost 50 years after the idea was first proposed by a west county supervisor to federal officials in Washington, D.C., to handle Sonoma County's cycle of wet and dry years.

"The whole idea was to get someone to start to look at this cycle. You had floods or it was so dry you could walk across the river and not get your ankles wet," said Carl Jackson of Santa Rosa, who was assistant general manager of the Sonoma County Water Agency when the dam was constructed.

It wasn't until 1960 that the first public hearing was held in Sonoma County and 1967 until the dam, estimated to cost $42.4 million, was under construction.

What followed were years of often bitter debate. In 1974, a federal court in San Francisco upheld legal action challenging the Corps' environmental impact statement and blocked construction. Later that year, Sonoma County voters by a narrow margin endorsed completion of the dam.

The dam gained new life in 1979 when, in a second election, county voters by a 3-1 margin rejected an initiative calling for an end to the dam project. A year later, a federal court ruling open the way for construction.

Healdsburg attorney Gail Jonas said opponents raised many questions about the dam, including its proximity to the Healdsburg-Rodgers Creek Fault, the potential for silting up, the lack of recreation and the natural resources that were being covered by 300 feet of water.

All those questions were addressed and the community debate that followed made for a better project, said Jonas, who was one of the leaders of the dam opposition.

"I go out there, I canoe on it, I camp there and make the best of it," Jonas said. "I don't have this squishy feeling because it is here. We did, as a citizens' group, a pretty good job finding out some of the problems with the dam, and our work facilitated in getting many of those things resolved."

Today, the reservoir draws about 500,000 visitors a year, said Kenneth Bausch, an Army Corps of Engineers ranger.

"It basically provides a lot of recreation for a lot of people of the whole area, water-skiing, fishing, kayaking, canoeing and stargazing, a lot of people like to come out here for that," Bausch said.

There is a public boat ramp and a private marina, 40 miles of trails and 200 campsites, 100 of which are accessible only by boaters or hikers.

The compacted earthen dam, made with 30 million yards of dirt and rock scraped from surrounding hillsides, itself is 3,000 feet wide and 319 feet tall.

The dam created a lake that when filled covers 3,600 acres and has a 73-mile shoreline. Its Dry Creek arm is nine miles long and its Warm Springs arm four miles.

It holds a water supply of 212,000 acre-feet and a flood pool of 130,000 acre-feet.

During winter storms, it holds back enough water to take 5 feet to 8 feet off the Russian River as it flows through Guerneville, often the difference between flooding or not.

The Sonoma County Water Agency has rights to 75,000 acre-feet each year for the 600,000 residents it serves in the major cities and districts from Windsor to San Rafael.

The problem, however, is how to get that water to the Russian River, where the Water Agency has its pumps and ponds.

It now depends on the flow down Dry Creek, which is too fast for the steelhead and salmon that populate the creek, said Dave Manning, the Water Agency's senior environmental specialist.

While the agency, state and federal agencies study what the optimum flow should be, the Water Agency has already begun a study to build a pipeline down Dry Creek or West Dry Creek roads to the agency's ponds near Wohler Bridge.

You can reach Staff Writer

Bob Norberg at 521-5206 or bob.norberg@pressdemocrat.com.