Amador County could jeopardize its viability as a player in a future "regional" approach to water supply if it takes a hard line against a new, taller Pardee Dam.

That was part of the message from a trio of East Bay Municipal Utility District officials Monday as they stumped through San Joaquin, Amador ad Calaveras counties in a run-up series of media conferences around the publishing today of environmental documentation on possible approaches to long-term water supply. EBMUD has rights to Mokelumne River water.

General manager Dennis Diemer downplayed the notion that the utility's 2040 water plan would pit Bay area residents against foothills residents. Much local opposition has come to the idea of a new, taller Pardee Dam envisioned to flood extra miles of the Mokelumne in Amador and Calaveras, including the Middle Bar Bridge. Other, smaller-scope dam ideas exist as well. When in the future EBMUD chooses among various supply ideas and proposes one, it could be that Amador County will have decided its own water needs at that time would call for a new, taller Pardee Dam, EBMUD officials speculated.

"It's a regional project," Diemer said. "We don't know what Amador's need will be for an enlarged Pardee. Until we know that, we (won't know what to propose)."

Agency spokesman Charles Hardy said, "We do not want to do a project unless we're doing it as a regional project - until we've dealt with issues for stakeholders."

But Amador County supervisors in a Sept. 21 letter to EBMUD gave advice on stakeholders' views of which they are aware.

"To summarize stakeholder comments, additional storage capacity should not negate the investments in the historic Middle Bar Bridge, the existing whitewater recreational takeout facilities, the potential for commercial whitewater boating (or) the preservation of cultural sites," supervisors wrote. "We ask a commitment that future water levels in Pardee Reservoir will sustain investments at the Middle Bar Bridge."

EBMUD's basic position is that it won't commit firmly, now, to any specifics regarding its 30-year water plan. California law distinguishes between Environmental Impact Report documents that concern a particular proposed project - in which plans must be laid out for handling expected environmental effects - and those that do not concern a particular project. EBMUD's now-published "programmatic" environmental document does not lay out plans concerning, for example, the Middle Bar Bridge.

Instead, the agency wants to delay firm commitments until a stage in which EBMUD plans will firm up around the Mokelumne River Inter-Regional Conjunctive Use Project, a proposal to conjunctively manage a portion of Mokelumne River water for the benefits of EBMUD and the counties of Alpine, Amador, Calaveras and San Joaquin.

When asked, "If Amador seeks to block Pardee, it hurts its position relative to the IRCUP?" Diemer did not hesitate.

"Right," he said.

Katherine Evatt, co-president of the nonprofit Foothill Conservancy, said the water-banking element is the weak link in EBMUD's thinking. Groundwater tapping is currently unregulated in San Joaquin County with no talk of regulating it, Evatt said. In addition, at a time when the ecology in the San Joaquin-Sacramento Delta is dying partly because of reduced flows from rivers such as the Mokelumne and the American, talk of taking more Mokelumne water for the East Bay is "ludicrous," Evatt said.

The Programmatic Environmental Impact Report is available at www.ebmud.com.