CSPA and allied groups in the Foothills Water Network (FWN) filed an extensive protest of Nevada Irrigation District’s (NID) application to construct a large new dam on the Bear River near Colfax. FWN protested the application for “Centennial Reservoir” on October 25, 2016.
In proposing Centennial Reservoir, NID has dusted off a 90-year-old concept and gussied it up with a one-dimensional application of climate change science to justify building an expensive reservoir that it doesn’t need and can’t pay for without state or ratepayer subsidy.
In the protest, FWN calls out NID’s high water use and inefficient infrastructure; the lack of water in the Bear River to support NID’s “county of origin” application and NID’s prospective unauthorized reliance on Yuba River water; NID’s efforts to bully the Bureau of Land Management out of the way; and NID’s apparent end-around past licensing hydropower facilities at the proposed new dam. FWN also protests a long list of negative environmental impacts, including all those attaching to inundation of six miles of river; reduction of high flows in the lower-most sections of the Bear River that provide low velocity juvenile rearing habitat for salmon, steelhead and sturgeon; and impacts of reducing unregulated flow from the Bear River into the Feather River, the Sacramento River, the Delta, and San Francisco Bay.
If Nevada Irrigation District perseveres with its Bear River folly, this battle will be protracted.