California Water Pricing the Proposed

California Water Pricing

The proposed hydroelectric Clavey-Wards Ferry water project development should not be allowed. The river resource has already been developed to over capacity. Further development may ruin the precious natural resource beyond repair, including the drying up of the remaining down stream water supply to the California population in that area.

The following arguments support my recommendation:

By 1983 existing water projects captured 90% of the Tuolomne River's water. There simply is not much more to be taken (Kincaid, 1). Even a former California State Department of Fish and Game biologist's estimate that the new reservoir would contain less than 10 pounds of fish per acre as compared to the Tuolumne's present 1000 pounds per acre (Ibid, 6).

Every source of power has environmental costs. Although the hydroelectric power is "clean," the environmental impacts upon fishing, camping and downstream water customers who will have even less water than they currently do have to be weighed in as well as to the needs of large metropolitan areas such as San Francisco. The inundation of the remaining eighteen wild miles of river front will virtually dry up the remaining downstream flow of the river (Ibid). In addition, past environmental costs have been understated in applications for hydroelectric projects in the Sierras (Ibid, 7).

3) the costs of the project are far understated in terms of social cost. This is shown graphically in Exhibit 8 where total price tag in these costs will be $214,263,000 (Ibid, 18).

The counter-arguments are as follows:

1) California's burgeoning populations needs water. Water conservation can only provide so much of the resource. Other resources need to be developed to keep up with demand. The Clavey-Wards Ferry project will create a reservoir that will provide an extra 12,000 acre of water for supply to the growing population needs of the San Francisco Bay area (Ibid, 3)