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The Last Wild Rivers
In California's water wars, each battle has roots in previous conflicts. The Clavey River, a 37-mile tributary to the Tuolumne River that is one of only four undammed rivers left in the Sierra, has become the latest battleground in a blood feud that can be traced to the 1984 California Wilderness Act and even further, to the controversial decision to build Hetch Hetchy's O'Shaughnessy Dam in 1916, a benchmark not only in California water politics, but in the history of the U.S. environmental movement.
The latest salvo was fired April 19 when American Rivers, a national environmental group, placed the Clavey on its top ten list of endangered rivers for the second year. The Clavey is in the top ten not because it has earned a platinum record but because it is a gold standard for undisturbed Sierra riverine ecosystems - and because a $703 million hydroelectric dam project threatens its pristine character.
"If you want a place to study a natural, undisturbed ecosystem, the Clavey comes as close as any place in California," says UC Davis professor Peter Moyle. "My experience is that it's the only drainage in the Sierra with no introduced fish. The Clavey is a reference point for the rest of the ecosystem."
Reference point, shmeference point, says John Mills, director of the Clavey dam project for the Turlock Irrigation District (TID). Mills says the project, which consists of a 413-foot-high dam, four smaller dams and 12 miles of pipeline, is necessary because of California's high growth rate.
"Essentially it's necessary to accommodate the population increase of three-quarters of a million people a year," says Mills. "There's no way you can institute enough conservation measures for that. You need to bring new power on line."
Independent consultant David Marcus came to a different conclusion in testimony to TID's board. Citing several alternative power sources for the district, Marcus stated that the Clavey is "an unneeded, high-cost project that is a poor fit with TID's system."
Evidently feeling the pressure, Mills revealed to Estuary that project engineers recently began studying at least one alternative to the big-ticket dam project: a smaller-scale 1986 proposal to divert water farther upstream into an existing reservoir.
Environmentalists interpret Mills' revelation as a sign that they're gaining ground. "He's scrambling now to get anything," crowed Steve Evans of Friends of the River. Mike Urkov of the Tuolumne River Preservation Trust says that if other alternatives are being explored, it's a violation of the law. Urkov says the Clavey River Project, which is now applying for a license from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, has not given the public a chance to comment on an upstream diversion alternative, only on the big dam plan. The commission is expected to issue a draft EIS this month.
To win permanent protection for the Clavey, environmentalists must pull off an odd balancing act. The Clavey is set for inclusion in an omnibus Wild and Scenic Rivers bill expected to be introduced to Congress in early 1995 by Congressman George Miller and Senator Barbara Boxer. If the threat to the Clavey recedes too much, it will weaken the environmentalists' case, since a river must be threatened to qualify for wild and scenic status.
The Clavey has been in jeopardy since an 11th-hour compromise between Senators Alan Cranston and Pete Wilson left a loophole in the 1984 California Wilderness Act specifically excluding the Clavey from protection. The loophole was engineered by Congressman Rick Lehman, whose district included Tuolumne County.
Lehman's action was not surprising given the longstanding grudge match between Tuolumne County and San Francisco over both water and power. TID's Mills is a third-generation native of the Tuolumne area. Arguments for biodiversity - the Clavey is one of the state's few surviving native trout fisheries and hosts 14 species under consideration for endangered status - don't seem to impress him as much as the historic competition between the country and the city.
"Tuolumne County gets only four-tenths of one percent of the water it has behind dams," says Mills. "It all goes to San Francisco. The San Francisco Board of Supervisors voted against damming the Clavey. Tuolumne supervisors supported tearing down O'Shaughnessy Dam."
Never mind that the Clavey project was originally designed only to provide electricity. Mills claims that it also will furnish as much as 50,000 acre-feet of water, which can be sold for as much as $15 million a year.
Urkov calls Mills' projections absurd. "There's not going to be any water for Tuolumne County from this dam," he says. "The reservoir is only 120 acre-feet. To take that much water, they would lose their capacity to generate power. If they were honest they would work on an addition to Lyons reservoir and leave the Clavey alone."
If that happens, the Turlock Irrigation District will lose the approximately $8 million it has already sunk into the project.
Mills says he wouldn't be the first soldier to fall on this battlefield. "It's the old water wars of California," he says. "Mark Twain is someplace laughing still."
Contact: Mike Urkov (415)292-3531 or John Mills (209)532-9605
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