Black Rock on the rocks!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Published Jan. 2009 in the Curlew
The
US Bureau of Reclamation (BOR) has just released its mammoth Final
Planning Report / Environmental Impact Statement Yakima River Basin
Water Storage Feasibility Study which I will simply refer to in this
article as the FEIS.
The preferred alternative recommended in
the FEIS is the No Action Alternative, meaning the study does not
recommend building the Black Rock Reservoir or the Wymer Dam and
reservoir further upstream on Yakima River. This is an enormous victory
for the environment of the Mid-Columbia, fish and wildlife of both the
Hanford Reach and the Yakima Basin, as well as the health and safety of
our community and avoids squandering billions of dollars of the
taxpayer’s hard earned money.
The two volume report was released
on December 19th and there has not been sufficient time to fully review
the report, so some of my initial impressions may change after further
review.
The Black Rock
Alternative was not the preferred
alternative for one reason – cost benefit ratio. The FEIS estimates the
cost of the project at between $4.95 and $7.73 billion dollars and
predicts $5.69 billion as the most probable cost. The cost benefit
ratio in the FEIS fell to a new low of $.013 which means the value of
each dollar spent on the project’s construction would return only 13
cents in benefits. The Bureau of Reclamation simply could not recommend
proceeding with a project whose costs so far outweigh its benefits.
Unfortunately the BOR continues to view the Black Rock project as
having the potential ability to meet the needs of irrigators, and
municipal water needs in the Lower Yakima Valley as well as enhancing
fish passage but at a prohibitive price. The objections we raised in
our comments to the draft Environmental Impact Statement remain
unanswered save the prohibitive cost of the project.
BOR
mistakenly holds to the fallacy that excess water is available in the
Columbia River for diversion to Black Rock. The proposal calls for
major withdrawals of water from the Columbia during September and
October, when maximum flows are needed for fish migration. The FEIS
contains a statement by the US Fish & Wildlife Service which
notes
if Black Rock were built it would destroy and further fragment the
regions scarce shrub-steppe habitat, increase fire danger, disrupt
migratory corridors used by large and small mammals and cause flow
alterations in the Yakima River that might be harmful to fish. These
concerns have led the USF&WS to recommend adoption of the No
Action
Alternative while encouraging the BOR to seek water conservation
measures to increase water available to native aquatic species in the
Yakima River.
We raised
concerns about 30 to 52 thousand acre
feet of water seeping annually from Black Rock into the aquifer and
moving under the Hanford reservation pushing contaminated ground water
into the Columbia River. The BOR responded to these concerns with a
proposal to drill shallow wells to retrieve this water and construct an
enormous dam on the Arid Lands Ecology Reserve portion of the Hanford
Reach National Monument to further collect this water and funnel it
into a pipeline to drain into the Yakima River. This proposal violates
the purposes for which the Monument was established and could be
construed to violate the Congressional prohibition on dams and
diversions in the Hanford Reach. The groundwater mitigation proposal
was added to the FEIS after the draft EIS’s comment period closed. The
mitigation proposal
was not available for public review prior to its
inclusion in the FEIS. The proposal is questionable and should be
viewed as nothing more than a possible solution. The failure of BOR to
present their proposed groundwater mitigation plan in the draft EIS is
a fatal flaw and the report should not be considered an Environmental
Impact Statement for the purposes of the National Environmental Policy
Act.
The proposed
Black Rock dam would be located on two faults.
In responding to the draft EIS, we expressed major concerns that the
dam would not be able to withstand an earthquake associated with these
underlying faults. We also expressed concerns over the ability of
Horsethief Hill to withstand an earthquake. The right shoulder of the
proposed dam would rest on Horsethief Hill, which has a long geological
history of landslides. We fear seismic activity would cause Horsethief
Hill to crumble and allow a wall of water hundreds of feet high to come
crashing down on the Hanford Reservation. Although the FEIS attempted
to address these concerns we feel they remain unresolved and much
research remains to be done.
We are apparently in
good company
as the FEIS includes a statement from the US Department of Energy who
raised the same geological questions. The statement signed by DOE’s
Assistant Secretary, Ines Trairy concludes “In summary, DOE believes
that the development of the Black Rock Reservoir has the potential to
cause severe environmental injury to the Hanford Site and the Columbia
River that has not been fully evaluated. Therefore, DOE believes that
the Black Rock Alternative should not be selected.”
These concerns are far more serious than mere cost benefit ratios and
should end further consideration for the project.
We
encourage you to write the BOR and express your support for the NO
Action Alternative and your concerns over the environmental threats
posed by Black Rock.
You can submit comments on the FEIS until February 3, 2009.
These comments should be submitted to:
Bureau of Reclamation
Attn: Mr. David Kaumheimer, Environmental Programs Manager
Upper Columbia
Area Office
1917 Marsh Road, Yakima, Washington 98901-2058.
Mr. Kaumheimer’s telephone number is 509-575-5848 ext 612
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