Royal Gorge's Winter of Discontent on Donner Summit

The voluminous amount of snow cloaking the Sierra is ensuring a good year for ski resorts, and, if it is sustained, a good year for water supplies for California. All our rain/snow dances, or our fervent prayers, as the case may be, have been met with plentiful water, in all its forms. With continued snow and rain, our fragile fisheries might have, if not a real reprieve, at least a year's interruption of their downward spiral.

For Royal Gorge LLC (RG), however, watching all that chilled liquid falling must be a trying exercise of "my kingdom for some water "--unless they figure out a way to capture it all, one way or another.  Anyone who attended RG's consultant's presentation to Sierra Lakes County Water District (SLCWD) board meeting this month, or who read that hard-to-get bestseller, "Water Supply Alternatives"*,  would be well aware that all of RG's plans to procure water involve, with perhaps the exception of wells bored on their own Summit property, raising dams where dams don't belong, or taking water from places that might arguably need it more than 1000 new condos/houses.

First off, RG proposed to raise the dam 6" on Dulzura, one of the two connected Serene Lakes- a nonstarter if there ever was one.  6" sounds like a paltry amount, but water has a way of spreading (being annoyingly liquid), and that 6" will put private property under water, damage the protected greenbelt, and will threaten landscaping and foundations. RG made the dubious assertion that during snowmelt the lake is already higher; they just want to keep the level up, well, it turns out, maybe a few more months.  Add in a rapid snow melt year, some ice dams,  and extreme flood hazards could result. But hey, who minds if their front yard is their own little Okefenokee swamp? Send for some alligators.

The other  proposed dam, the real stinker, down Serena/Ice Creek, measures 1/4 mile across, and 60 to 70 feet high.  But wait, you ask, isn't Serena Creek a tributary stream for the Wild and Scenic North Fork of the American River, and isn't there pristine habitat down there, with many acres under conservation easements? Yes, and Serena stream supports native trout, beavers, maybe some Pacific Fishers (which could be on California endangered list soon), and rare Ceanothus plants-- 

Oh, come on, what's one stream, and some rare animals and scarce native plants killed in the interest of building 1000 condos/homes? And nobody needs that water downstream, right?  Wrong!  After the water keeps a perennial stream alive, it helps keep the North Fork of the American River flowing, just like all those springs running down hillsides keep the South Fork of the Yuba vibrant and alive. 

Oh, wait- like some of those particular springs naturally flowing to the South Yuba might if Royal Gorge LLC wasn't  already sending a whole lot of water from the springs on their Rainbow Lodge property off in tanker trucks to fill designer water bottles. There, though, I can say they're turning over a new leaf.  Instead of bottling that water that should flow to the South Yuba, they're now proposing to pipe it 9 miles up a not insubstantial 1000 foot rise in elevation, to water their 1000 unit development.  1000 ft, that's quite an elevation to surmount, and what with ripping up old HWY 40 for the pipes, pumps, and all, you're looking at what could quite possibly be some of the most expensive water in California. 1000 units, well that's a lot too- but these all pale in order of comparison to the magnitude of chutzpah required to capture the water for their 1000 condos from springs that  (should) flow to the South Yuba, and then to dump that pure water back transformed as 1000 dwelling units' worth of effluent upstream. Now, mind you, Las Vegas puts their sewage effluent out upstream of their water intake, and if you've heard that tired "What happens in Las Vegas stays in Las Vegas" saying once, you've heard it too many times.  But the South Yuba River isn't Las Vegas- nor for that matter should we be treating it like the Rodney Dangerfield of rivers. The South Yuba deserves some respect. So, for that matter, do the end water users down in Nevada County.

RG hopes to get other dribs and drabs from a few wells on their property that have not undergone extensive testing, and from SLCWD's emergency wells- the ones the district has always deemed prudent to save for emergencies such as fire fighting, as the arsenic and manganese contaminant loads are too high for everyday use. One wonders if RG's wells have similar contaminant loads? That won't help sell those condos and fractional ownerships, that's for sure. Not unless arsenic suddenly becomes the new botox...

Think of that beautiful snow, made glorious water by the summer sun (actually spring), flowing down the streams and rivers of the Sierra. It's hard to imagine a more breathtaking sight than the South Yuba River, when the early flow of water picks up, sparkling and glinting in the sun, with stubborn patches of snow lingering in the rocks.  Apply this hard worked sentence to streams that feed the North Fork of the American River too (please). 

Add a piece of a quote, "And all the clouds that lour'd upon our house, in the deep bosom of the ocean buried"

You see, that's the problem for RG, and developers like them, who seek to capture the water rushing down the Sierra--that water has an assignment elsewhere. Much of it, sometimes too much it seems, is pumped off to keep California from going dry.  Those clouds, that end up, as alluded by William Shakespeare "in the deep bosom of the ocean buried?" Look at the plight of our Delta, and the threatened collapse of Delta fisheries.  If we take too much water up here at the top of the watershed, what will be left of the water that should flow to the ocean, keeping the entire water system that is dependent on natural flows from the Sierra whole?  

1000 condos for Royal Gorge, and 1000 condos for some other developer, and  perhaps 1000 condos more, creeping at such a petty pace across the Sierra- will developers' thirsty ways bring our streams and waterways to a dusty death?

*There was a waiting list of well over a month at Placer County for RG's bestseller