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Tuesday, 28 April 2009 |
 Amador County – Amador Water Agency board members and staff spoke at a workshop hosted by supervisors last Friday to learn about the East Bay Municipal Utility District’s regional water plans. AWA General Manager Jim Abercrombie said a loosely projected need for 20,000 acre feet of water in Amador likely won’t be needed until 2030 or 2040. And he said enlarging the dam at Pardee “would not be a reliable water supply if we did this project ourselves,” because the county only would have rights to 10,000 acre feet. Looking at other plans in the region, a groundwater recharging plan in San Joaquin County, the Duck Creek Reservoir and the Pardee expansion, he said it didn’t “seem viable to do 3 unrelated projects.” But combining them in the Integrated Regional Conjunctive Use Program could make them possible and decrease their collective scopes. He said not needing the 20,000 acre feet of water for 30 years in Amador County could help finance a Lower Bear River Reservoir project being studied by PG&E. The utility is looking at raising Lower Bear’s dam by 6 feet for pump storage. Abercrombie said looking at the “synergies” in both plans, the AWA could give its water to PG&E for power generation “to pay off the debt service” of the dam at Lower Bear, then “get the water when we need it.” Abercrombie said the “IRCUP concept is not well defined now.” It came from Amador, Calaveras and East Bay joining forces after years of opposition to each other’s projects. IRCUP would use seasonal excess flows. Abercrombie said the flow of the Mokelumne River “is fully appropriated, except for winter flows.” But Amador County’s problem is adequate storage. Parts of the 2040 plan would address that. Supervisor Richard Forster asked how a dam expansion at Pardee might affect the Middle Bar. Abercrombie said “maybe it’s a smaller dam down stream that doesn’t affect levels.” AWA board member Bill Condrashoff said the board opposed the expansion of Pardee because it was the only details given in the 2040 plan. AWA Chairman Terence Moore agreed, and he read from the state water plan that cites conjunctive use as the preferred approach to handling global warming. Symptoms include more flooding in the winter, and solutions include building more storage and routing water to drought areas, like groundwater recharging would do for the San Joaquin County area. Story by Jim Reece
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