Is Temperance Flat Dam really just a shell game for real estate developers?

The dam-building crowd has long criticized Friant dam, built in the 1940's on the San Joaquin River, as being too small to capture the entire flows of the river in wet years. They forget that the dam was never designed to divert the entire flow of the river. In fact many promises were made by the federal government that only surplus flows would be diverted south via the Friant-Kern canal.

Instead, when the dam was completed, the Bureau of Reclamation dried up the river, and sent the water south to big cotton growers. It was the first great water grab in the San Joaquin Valley for private interests. And it cheated regular Fresno residents of the many beneficial uses of the state's second largest river. Riverfront homeowners sued, but lost after a 16 year long legal battle. It took another 50 years to restore just 18% of the flow of the river to its natural course.

Fresno residents, having forgotten this history, and worried about shortages of water for farming, are pushing to build a second dam at Temperance Flat. The original purpose of the proposed second dam was to ensure the capture all flows of the San Joaquin River, ensuring that none of it was ever spilled by Friant dam to the dry San Joaquin riverbed. Even with this assumption, the dam did not make economic sense unless the public paid for half of it.

With the recently mandated river restoration flows, the dam makes even less sense.
Pre-restoration simulations prior showed that if the minimal pre-restoration flows to the river were maintained, the dam could at best change delivery of an average 116,000 acre feet of “surplus” high flow water in the winter. Currently the high flow water is released to San Joaquin growers and groundwater banks whenever Friant dam fills to the flood safety level. Instead, the water held in the new upstream dam could be stored and delivered on a schedule.

Why would anyone pay $3 billion for a dam that would simply change the timing of water deliveries to groundwater banks, which are specifically designed and operated to store unpredictable flood flows? The answer lies the need by real estate developers for "reliable" water supplies for new subdivisions. “Surplus” flood flows are not reliable and cannot be used as the primary water supply for a development. But if the water is held behind a dam, it becomes a contracted, reliable supply.

So the real benefits of Temperance Flat dam would go to the “conjunctive use partners” who would put up about half the money for the construction of the dam. These partners include the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, and the Westside Mutual Water Company controlled by Stewart Resnick, who owns about 140,000 acres in Kern County.

While the dam has been represented as increasing the reliability of the Friant water supply for agriculture, growers along the Friant-Kern canal would see little benefit from new contracts, because they would likely be too expensive for agricultural use. The growers would however, lose the high flow water remaining after the mandated San Joaquin Restoration flows, and likely also see a reduction in water for Friant Class 2 contracts.

One has to ask if this dam, sold to California taxpayers as “increasing surface storage,” is worth taxpayers paying half the $3 billion cost for the supposed public benefit, or whether it is really just a shell game for water brokers and real estate developers.