White House pushes project to raise Shasta Dam
State objects to $1.3 billion proposal
WASHINGTON – The Trump administration is pushing forward with a colossal public works project in Northern California – heightening the towering Shasta Dam the equivalent of nearly two stories.
The problem is that California is dead-set against the plan, and state law prohibits the 602-foot New Deal-era structure from getting any taller.
But in these times of unprecedented tension between Washington and California, the state’s objection to this $1.3 billion project near the Sacramento River is hardly proving a deterrent. The Trump administration is pursuing the project with gusto, even as it seeks to make deep cuts in popular conservation programs aimed at California’s water shortages.
The project promises a big payoff for water interests with close ties to the administration. A former lobbyist for one of the biggest of those interests, the politically connected Westlands Water District, holds a key administration post with power over the flow of federal money.
And to ease the project’s path, senior Republican members of Congress, led by House Majority Leader Kevin Mccarthy of California, are maneuvering to slip an amendment into a must-pass budget bill this month without hearings or other public scrutiny. The measure would ensure that Westlands, which would be one of the biggest beneficiaries of a taller dam, would not have to help pay for it. Mccarthy says such projects that increase the state’s water storage capacity are “absolutely critical.”
The sudden momentum behind heightening the dam – a plan the federal government only a few years ago put on the shelf amid concerns it was incompatible with state environmental laws – threatens to trigger a constitutional conflict that tests the state’s authority over what gets built on federal land within its borders.
“Under California law, this is an illegal project,” said Rep. Jared Huffman, D-calif. “The Trump administration would have to abrogate a century of federal deference to state laws on California water to go ahead with this.”
California Natural Resources Secretary John Laird wrote to congressional leaders last week, urging them to reject the administration’s plan to spend $20 million in 2019 on design and other “preconstruction” activities at Shasta Dam.
“The Shasta Dam enlargement project would inundate several miles of the protected Mccloud River in violation of state law,” Laird wrote. The Mccloud is among the pristine California waters protected by the three decade-old Wild and Scenic Rivers Upper Lake Shasta, at Shasta Dam, is seen on Feb. 17.
Act, which prohibits the state from supporting any projects that disturb such rivers.
The dam-heightening proposal has been bitterly fought in California for decades. The Central Valley farms served by Westlands are eager for the tens of thousands of acre-feet of water it could generate for their land. The farms, many of which grow water-intensive crops such as almonds, are among the first water users to see their allocations reduced in times of drought or when water is redirected to preserve the habitat of threatened and endangered species. They are in a long-running dispute with the government over the amount of water they are entitled to receive.
“Investing in new infrastructure at Shasta will create a needed and significant new water supply for California’s families, farmers, cities and environmental resources,” said Marlon Duke, a spokesman at the Bureau of Reclamation, the division of the Interior Department overseeing the effort. He acknowledged that California’s law may prohibit allocation of state money for the dam, but said the bureau planned to move ahead.
In the middle of this dispute is David Bernhardt, the former
Westlands lobbyist who is now the No. 2 official at the Interior Department.
His appointment was forcefully opposed last year by conservationists and Democrats, who argued Bernhardt has big conflicts of interest for too many matters before the department. In accepting the post, Bernhardt said he would relinquish his law firm partnership to guarantee he would not financially benefit from any of his actions in Washington.
But his critics are unsatisfied. “He’s the poster child of this special-interest revolving door between Interior and Westlands,” Huffman said of Bernhardt, who returned to work at the law firm representing Westlands after his last tour as a high-ranking Interior Department official during the George W. Bush administration. Once Bernhardt leaves his latest government job, “he will walk back out the door to a very lucrative payday,” Huffman said.
Bernhardt did not respond to a request for comment. The Interior Department said in a statement that its ethics officers had reviewed Bernhardt’s agreement with the department and advised that it does not require his recusal from decisions on Shasta Dam.