California Reservoir Proposal Expected to Threaten River, Climate and Fish

The Center for Biological Diversity announced that conservation and environmental justice groups filed a legal challenge on Dec. 20 to the largest reservoir project approved in California in decades. The lawsuit alleges the Sites Reservoir would harm the Sacramento River ecosystem, threaten already imperiled fish species and release greenhouse gas pollution. The Law Office of Donald B. Mooney represents the groups.

Sites would require the construction of several enormous dams and two 3,000-foot-long and 23-foot-wide tunnels, costing an estimated $4.4 billion.

The proposed site is a rural area about 80 miles northwest of Sacramento. The project would store roughly 1.5 million acre feet of water or nearly 490 billion gallons. To fulfill this capacity, the reservoir would redirect large quantities of water from the Sacramento River system, an ecosystem that is home to federally protected salmon and steelhead.

Most runs of Sacramento River salmon are in jeopardy, and all are declining. Sites would reduce flows in the Sacramento River when salmon are migrating.

“The Sites Reservoir project will cause much environmental harm, which falls on the public, and a small amount of good, which primarily benefits the project investors,” said Ron Stork, senior policy advocate at Friends of the River, in a news release. “Among other harms, the reservoir will be a major greenhouse gas emitter. A recent analysis estimated that Sites would emit the equivalent of 80,000 gasoline-powered cars each year.”

Friends of the River, the California Sportfishing Protection Alliance, the California Water Impact Network and Save California Salmon joined the Center for Biological Diversity in filing the lawsuit in Yolo County Superior Court. The suit challenges the Sites Project Authority, a state joint powers authority, accusing it of violating the California Environmental Quality Act in approving the reservoir.

According to Chris Shutes, executive director of the California Sportfishing Protection Alliance, diverting too much water won’t solve the problem of giving away too much water. Shutes claimed that the alternatives in the project environmental report looked at were different ways to divert more water. Additionally, the report for the Sites Reservoir low-balled the required flow in the Sacramento River because a flow that protects fish would make the reservoir too expensive to build.

The Sites Reservoir project is aiming to capture large volumes of floodwaters from significant storms and reserve them as a buffer against drought. According to the Center for Biological Diversity, despite the expense and environmental harms, it will provide a small amount of water-supply benefit, increasing the state’s storage capacity by about 3.5%.

“It’s very difficult to justify the expense and environmental costs of big surface storage infrastructure projects, and the Sites Reservoir will cause far more harm than good,” said John Buse, an attorney at the center. “Water storage undoubtedly provides some benefit, but we should look at cheaper alternatives that do more for people, rivers, and fish.”

According to the center, water evaporation from surface reservoirs can result in significant water loss, worsening with California’s warm climate. Surface storage projects can also contribute to climate change by releasing methane, a potent greenhouse gas. Surface reservoirs also can impair water quality because the warmer water they impound can contribute to toxic algal blooms, which also will worsen with climate change. A surface reservoir is a large open body of water that collects and stores water on the Earth’s surface that can be man-made or natural.