ITS AULD LANG SYNE FOR SERENE LAKES AND SERENA CREEK

Remember how Foster and Syme's Royal Gorge LLC said they'd never do anything to harm our lakes (it's on their web page)? Did you believe them?  Well, welcome to Foster and Syme's reality, and let me warn you, it's a very ugly reality indeed.

I'll detail just a few of the low points here today. This evening there will be a brief overview on www.saveserenelakes.org, and when we're able to get copies made from the one set of documents Royal Gorge LLC so thoughtfully left with the county (perhaps they're making a bonfire with the rest), more info will be available-- it will take a few days to get it  up on pdf. Of course Royal Gorge LLC, the open and transparent fuzzy developers might post all of it up on their page, but I wouldn't hold my breath.

Some low lights (and there are many):

Draining, dredging (Serene Lake) and damming (Dulzura) the Serene Lakes are very much part and parcel of Royal Gorge's plans, unless they decide to park a dredging-barge out there instead.(that will fit well, won't it).

Not only do they want to raise the dam (they call it "water level management") at Dulzura (with free galoshes for all the houses on Island way, no doubt) they want to build ANOTHER dam down towards Cedars, to capture all the water that watered Serena Creek, a class one trout stream.  This will of course wipe out a lot of fish, but fish have been doing so well in California this year, so what's a few more dead fish?  Oh, never mind.

Remember Rainbow Lodge's unpermitted (since 1988) water sales, where they truck away water from a spring that flows to the South Yuba- well, who woulda thunk it-- they want to pipe all that water up to Lake Camp.

Now, with all that dredging and damming planned, do you wonder why Royal Gorge LLC wanted to hide it even from the water board for as long as possible?  And down Rainbow Lodge way, there had been quite a pitched battle with the small cabin owners over rights to that spring water, yet Royal Gorge continued to truck it away, to sell to Nestle-Perrier (this according to a RG employee). It was always curious why they didn't follow through with the permitting process in Placer County- so now we know they were planning on taking that water that should flow to the South Yuba, to use it to flush toilets in rental condos up at Donner Summit, under some perverted higher and better use doctrine, no doubt.

The next water board meeting is January 11, and now Foster and Syme's pig is out of the poke, you might want to think about showing up.

So we can all sing Auld Lang Syne for our lakes, streams, and river.