New Melones Dam - Controversy

Controversy

"The New Melones Dam was one of the last of its kind. Although proclamations that dam building no longer occurs in the United States are not completely true, it is true that no structure as large or as significant has since been built on an American river. And since this date, virtually no structural modification to a river in this country has gone unopposed."
—from Dam Politics: Restoring America's Rivers, by William R. Lowry

New Melones Dam was not without its controversies, and was fiercely opposed by groups such as the Sierra Club and individuals – especially river runners – who saw the Stanislaus River canyon as having greater value than a reservoir. Another cause of concern was the unique ecology of the canyon, which included endemic species such as Banksula melones, the Melones cave harvestman. The controversy raged in courts for years, culminating on May 20, 1979, as New Melones Lake was already rising. On that day, Friends of the River founder Mark Dubois hiked into the reservoir site and chained himself to a boulder, forcing the USACE to either stop filling the lake or to drown him.

Dubois's actions won a temporary reprieve for the river above Parrott's Ferry Bridge, as the California State Water Resources Control Board set the limit for lake level at 844 ft (257 m) above sea level, corresponding to a storage capacity of 438,000 acre·ft (540,000 dam³). However, in 1982 a record snowmelt combined with heavy rains caused the Stanislaus River to flow into the reservoir at a rate much higher than it could be released from the dam. The water level passed the state limit on January 15 and by early 1983, the water had risen so high that it crested the dam's emergency spillway. In March 1983, the state lifted its original restriction on New Melones lake level. Nevertheless, the controversy over the dam greatly strengthened the environmental movement in California, and very few new large dams have been built in the state since New Melones.

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