Dam Facts, Dam Lies, and Statistics

[courtesy of The California Majority Report]

There's talk swirling again in Sacramento about a deal with the Governor on a water bond. I ran across this post from the Friends of the River that puts things in perspective:

By Steve Evans
FOR Conservation Director

It’s a sad state of affairs when good public policy takes a back seat to sound bites that have no basis in reality. So here is a selection of pithy-sounding but less-than-factual sound bites of dam proponents compared to the real facts of the matter (complete with footnotes).

• "Do you know that for 20 years, well, actually since the late '70s, they have not built a dam? I mean, think about that. They have not built a dam."
  -- Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, July 14, 2007
• "California’s population is growing rapidly, but our statewide water storage and delivery system has not been significantly improved in 30 years."
  -- Association of California Water Agencies (ACWA), September 2007

In fact, more than 6.2 million acre feet of water storage has been developed in California since 1990. (1) This includes 5.3 million acre feet of groundwater storage in the San Joaquin Valley, as well as 924,000 acre feet of surface storage behind the Los Vaqueros, Diamond Valley, and Olivenhain Dams (all completed in the last 10 years). It is important to note that these dams were built by local water districts, and the total cost of the dams -- more than $2.5 billion -- was paid for by the ratepayers who directly benefit from the increased surface storage, not the state or federal taxpayers.

Read the rest here.