[RC] Tom McLintock to speak about the Auburn Dam on Monday - Horseraser
Sacramento,
California
Mr. Chairman and Members of
the Board:
Your board meets today to
consider revoking permits that are necessary for proceeding with
construction of the Auburn Dam. I’m sure there’ll be a detailed legal
discussion on both sides involving exactly what constitutes due diligence
in overcoming the endless legal obstacles that have delayed this project
since it was first authorized by Congress in
1965.
But all the legal arguments on
both sides won’t alter what we ALL know.
This dam has been stalled for
nearly 40 years by inexhaustible waves of litigation, political wrangling
and changing regulations. It is not a lack of diligence that prevents
completion of the Auburn Dam – it is rather an abundance of delay and
dilatory tactics that your board can either cut through or add
to.
And here is the fine point of
it.
The practical effect of your
decision will be to maintain the option of the Auburn Dam or to further
delay and complicate its ultimate completion.
When history looks back on
these proceedings – and it will – that is going to be the sum total of its
judgment. Not fine legal points. Not technical interpretations of
regulations. But the simple question: did the state act in the best
interests of its posterity?
You should already have a very
clear answer to that question.
The Auburn Dam means 2.3
million acre feet of water storage at a time when Californians are already
facing the prospect of growing droughts.
The Auburn Dam means 600 to
800 megawatts of clean and cheap electricity – enough for nearly a million
households -- at a time when Californians are already paying the highest
electricity prices in the United
States.
The Auburn Dam means 200 to
400 -year flood protection in a region whose levees are in perilous
condition.
A generation from now, all
that will truly matter to posterity is whether your actions aided or
delayed the delivery of this absolutely vital project – in a period when
the necessity for it was already becoming stunningly
obvious.
In a very real sense, your
decision either will affirm or disprove the Governor’s commitment to
deliver vitally needed water, energy and flood control projects for this
state.
There is an old legal
_expression_ that “hard cases make bad law,” meaning that one can get lost
in a thicket of legal minutia and end up reaching a ludicrous or unjust
decision.
A generation from now, the
residents of this valley will live in a society with abundant water, clean
energy and security from floods. Or they will live in a society of water
rationing, scarce and ruinously expensive electricity and constant threat
from flooding. And no decision will weigh more heavily in that future than
OUR generation’s commitment to complete the Auburn
Dam.
