Drought? and the Auburn Dam

We have had almost no rain in January and there is fairly little snow up in the mountains. There is starting to be rumbling in the Bee about the possibility that this will be a drought year.

I just started reading Assembling California, by John McPhee. It discusses the geologic history of California in general and this area specifically since his guide is UC Davis geologist Eldridge Moores. The chapter I read last night mentions the Auburn Dam on the American River, about an hour or so east of here in the foothills. Apparently the Department of the Interior started building the dam around 1970 or so. Then a big earthquake (5.7) happened near the Oroville Dam, on the Feather River north of here, in 1975. The Oroville, which is an earthen dam rather than the concrete one the Auburn Dam would have been, absorbed the blow. However, that quake was five times larger than the Auburn Dam was built to withstand. Apparently, twenty-five percent of similar sized reservoirs have generated earthquakes as a result of the weight of water that such a dam generates. The Sacramento Bee started running articles in the 70s while the project was being built about the likelihood and results of a cataclysmic earthquake at the dam site. They projected that Sacramento would be 20 feet underwater in two hours if the Auburn Dam were to burst from an earthquake.

That effectively scuttled the project, but it still hangs on with a skeleton staff on site and still plans being made to build it. John Doolittle, the congressman from that district, still advocates building the Auburn Dam. All the more reason why he should have been booted in November, and it was relatively close but Charlie Brown couldn't quite do it.