Dump Doolittle
Dam costs skyrocket - Bureau projects $9.6 billion needed for construction (G. Thomson, AJ)Costs have ballooned for a multipurpose dam at Auburn, according to a new report released Tuesday.Sac Bee editorial Forget an Auburn Dam on the study results:
Basing calculations on a 1978 design, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation report pegs the total projected cost for an Auburn dam at $9.6 billion -- billions more than previous estimates.
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U.S. Rep. John Doolittle, R-Roseville, had requested revised numbers last year in the wake of the Hurricane Katrina disaster. The bureau's report was commissioned in 2005 and made public three months after a mid-term election that left Doolittle's Republican Party in the minority in both the Senate and Congress.
Doolittle said that he had asked for the report to provide new estimates on costs and benefits of an Auburn dam.
But the congressman -- the dam's leading advocate in Washington -- said that with the shift in Washington to the Democrats, the report doesn't hold the weight it would have held if Republicans were still in the majority.
"It's going to provide the foundation for further progress but conditions in Congress are not right for it at this time," Doolittle said.
Rep. John Doolittle took a risk of that happening when he snuck into a bill some language requiring the Bureau of Reclamation to review his longtime favorite project, a dam in the American River near Auburn. The study is out, and its results show what a risk Doolittle took. The findings: Auburn Dam could cost nearly $10 billion. It would provide half the water yield that was originally advertised. And the economic costs of losing a free-flowing river in these canyons are greater than the economic benefits of the boaters atop the new reservoir.As the saying goes, be careful what you wish for.
