NID Withdraws Centennial Dam Proposal After SYRCL’s Decade-Long Opposition
On September 25th, the Nevada Irrigation District voted on the future of their proposed Centennial Dam project, a $1 billion project that SYRCL has rallied the community in opposition to since its inception.
In August of 2014, the Nevada Irrigation District (NID) began planning to construct a new 275-foot-tall dam and reservoir on the Bear River between the existing Rollins and Combie reservoirs. The water agency’s proposed new 110,000 acre-foot reservoir with a 275 foot-tall dam on the Bear River would have inundated six miles of the Bear River, completely flooding the Bear River Campground, more than 25 homes and 120 parcels, hundreds of cultural and sacred Native American sites, and the Dog Bar Bridge, the only crossing of the Bear River between Highway 49 and Highway 174.
SYRCL’s position was that in a time of record drought and climate change, we need thoughtful and scientifically based solutions to address our local water needs, and that big, expensive dams are mostly a thing of the past. In addition, half of the water that flows in the South and Middle Yuba Rivers already gets diverted to the Bear River, and Centennial could have demanded more. As an organization founded to stop inappropriate and destructive dams, SYRCL is never going to stand by when the Yuba is threatened.
SYRCL brought together the community in opposition to the project. More than 1,300 people became Dam Watchdogs at SYRCL’s 2017 Wild & Scenic Film Festival. That number eventually more than doubled as SYRCL educated the community about the negative effects the project would have on the environment. Hundreds of community members packed hearing rooms and attended NID Board meetings to express their concerns about the controversial project.
In early February of 2018, SYRCL submitted more than 3,000 letters to the California Water Commission challenging the recreational and ecosystem benefits claimed by the Nevada Irrigation District. Shortly thereafter, the State’s technical review team came to the same conclusion as that of Dam Watchdogs: Centennial Dam does not provide public benefits and therefore does not meet the necessary eligibility requirements to qualify for public funds.
Now, NID has voted to withdraw its water rights application and to discontinue all feasibility, environmental, and other analyses in support of the proposed Centennial Reservoir Project. SYRCL would like to thank the NID staff who have put in a tremendous amount of effort, including incorporating all the community feedback. The analysis of Centennial Dam as part of the Plan for Water process was thorough and included rigorous modeling. And to thank the NID Board who, upon seeing the environmental damage, huge price tag, and questionable public benefit realized that Centennial Dam isn’t how this community needs to address climate change.
“In the last decade, the number of people in this community who lent a hand to stop the construction of Centennial Dam has been inspiring,” said SYRCL’s executive director Aaron Zettler-Mann. “People coming together to stop the construction of bad water projects is what SYRCL was founded on, and it continues to be a large part of what we do today.”
Over the past ten years, we have demonstrated that an organized community can effectively stand up against threats to the watershed, advocating for both our community and the environment.
This post originally appeared on SYRCL.
