Consider Having Council Sign the Friends of the River Letter Urging the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation Interior Secretary to Reject the Proposed Shasta Dam Raise and the Temperance Flat Dam for the Friends of the River May 18, 2016 Legislative Outreach, which Requires Council Action at the May 17, 2016 Meeting.  (Mayor Spencer)
Nine A's consider having counsel sign the Friends of the River letter urging the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation Interior Secretary to reject the proposed Shasta Dam Raze and the Temperance Fight Dam for the Friends of the River. May 18, 2016. Legislative Outreach Which requires council action tonight. And this was my referral. And we do have speakers on it. And there is a letter that is attached here. And, but I, I brought it for, to hear if council would be interested in joining me. Otherwise I would sign it. And I really do want to attend the. I'm planning to attend the day tomorrow in Sacramento and join our community members. If, uh, if council supports this. All right. And I'm going to go ahead and call our speakers on this item Heinrich, Albert, Nina, Gordon Kirsch and then Richard Banger. Thank you very much. My name is Heinrich Albert. I'm a volunteer with Friends of the River and with the Sierra Club Water Committee. I've previously sent the members of the council information summarizing the two specific projects that we're asking or that we address in the letter and that we're asking you to support. What I would like to do tonight is just discuss the two issues that were raised in the letter from Alameda Municipal Power. So if you had a chance to look at the summary that we sent out on the Shasta Dam race, we don't discuss hydropower generation in that summary. And the reason is that there's no significant change. I've just gone back in and reviewed the Bureau of Reclamation, Feasibility and Environmental Impact statements. They look specifically at several different generating sites. Some go up, some go down. The net change is not significant. So if we do a cost benefit on this project and we look at the very significant dollar costs, we look at the environmental damage, which is done both upstream of the dam and downstream, including in our own estuary. If we look at the cultural loss to the women went to tribe and we try to balance this out with really what is just a pittance of new water and no significant change in hydroelectric generation. I think this just does not pencil out. This project does not make sense. Now, the second point that was raised was the litigation by Northern California Power Agency. So Alameda Municipal Power is a member of that group and they've initiated the suit, the purpose of which is to reduce the payments for environmental remediation that Alameda Municipal Power pays. So the Central Valley Project, which includes the Shasta Dam, it is required by law every year to do very extensive environmental remediation to balance out the damage that this existing project does. They in turn pass that on to their customers, including Alameda Municipal Power. Alameda Municipal Power wants to pay less for this environmental remediation. I have no opinion on the merits of that litigation, but in my opinion, when you're in a hole, stop digging. If you want to pay less for environmental remediation, then we shouldn't build more environmental problems that we then have to remediate. Thank you very much. Thank you. Nina Gordon Kirsch. Hi. My name is Nina. It's my first time at a city hall meeting. It's very exciting. I'm from Friends of the River and I have a lot of training in the water industry. I did a Fulbright scholarship in Israel about wastewater treatment, and then I continued and did my master's degree in environmental economics, and I wrote my thesis on a cost effectiveness analysis of wastewater treatment options. So I'm familiar with cost benefit analysis. The Temperance Flat Dam proposal doesn't make any sense from a cost benefit analysis perspective. The costs there's financial costs, $2.6 billion, and growing projects like that always increase in costs as they continue to get built. There's environmental costs, fisheries, damaged ecosystems of where the reservoir will be. A lot of those plants will get ruined. There's also cultural costs, such as the Native Americans that use that river and that whole area. And then there's benefits. There's an increase in water supply, but it's only about 70,000 acre feet per year. And that's a tiny, tiny percentage. That's like point 2% of California state water needs as a whole. So it's a really small percentage. Um, and then there's also hydropower, which is a benefit, and the project is proposed to create 160 megawatts of watt of electricity per year. Yet creation of this dam will actually flood two existing hydropower plants. And the net, there's a net loss in electricity production. So as much as there might be some hydropower created in this dam proposal, the overall power creation will decrease. So that doesn't make any sense. Um, so I just want to say that if Allen, if the AMP is focused on increasing renewable energy like hydropower, this isn't the answer. And there's been a lot of proposals and I think five different proposals and none of them have have shown to be successful. Thank you. Thank you for joining us. Richard Baer. And then he's our last speaker on this item. If you'd like to speak on the side and please turn on your slip. Thank you, Mayor. Members of the Council on City Staff. I support the letter. I think it's unfortunate that our municipal power company, whose middle name is Green, recommended that you take a neutral position on this. In this case, neutral is not benign. Neutral says that you're willing to live with the consequences. In the case of the Temperance Flat Dam of flooding, an area that another branch of the Interior Department has recommended for designation as a national, wild and scenic river. I think this points up a shortcoming of the AMP scorecard on what is green and. In their calculation. Apparently, the only way this river has any value is if money can be derived by sending water to agribusiness or generating power. And as as a previous speaker pointed out, it's not really going to be a net increase in power. This isn't the first time, by the way, that our municipal park company has been on the wrong side of the river, so to speak. About six years ago, when the Department of Interior recommended changing the water flow allocation on the Trinity River. Previously, up until that point, 90% went to agribusiness and power generation, 10% to the fish or the fishery. They wanted to raise it to 47% for the fishery. The rest to who? Agribusiness and power generation. What did our local power company do? They joined with the Northern California Power Association or agency filing suit to try and prevent implementation of that. Our city only withdrew from that lawsuit after there was a public uproar. Same thing happened in Palo Alto, Sacramento Utility District, Port of Oakland. And so I think. I think you should not remain neutral. You should take a firm stand. And some people may think, well, this is a little far afield. Well, it's no farther afield than sister city in Asia. You know, maybe we should have Sister Rivers take a road trip. All right. Well, thank you very much. And this is a lot closer than a sister city in Asia. This is right here in the state of California, in northern California. So I brought this as a referral. I think that the language in the letter is very straightforward. This year, the fate of three of California's outstanding rivers, McCloud, Sacramento, San Joaquin, are in our hands. And I agree with the last speaker that doing nothing is not doing nothing. And it is actually time. I submit it's time it is appropriate for us to take a position on this. And yes, given that there's enormous cost for dubious results and in the long term, I think we're we're better off following the approach that this letter supports. I move that we as a council sign this letter. I would second that. Yes. Member I'll just add that, you know, I've met with all three of the speakers on this individually and find their arguments compelling and I plan on supporting this and thank you for bringing it forward. You remember Ashcroft. So thank you, everyone, for your presentations. And I have met with staff and I understand the concerns of AMP. I will note that we do pride ourselves on having a clean, green utility. This is these rivers that are listed in the letter are not among the ones we receive our power from any of our hydroelectric power from . I do think you need to look on a case by case basis, and maybe there will come a time when we need to look at some of the hydro electric sources of AMP. But we I still think we do a great job with our electric municipal electric utility. I do give a lot of credit to the people who dig deep. Mr. Abbott has, I will say, hounded council. I don't know about others, but me and but I do appreciate those who go into depth and these and I also talked to a friend who's active in the both the Sierra Club and the League of Conservation Voters and looked at all different sides of this. And so I am prepared to support Alameda signing on or signing this letter as a as a member of the city council. Remember, these are. A thank you. I've met on several occasions with Mr. Albert and on most on all occasions I indicated to him that I was going to predicate my decision on what our legal counsel and what our AMP staff members have to say. And in conclusion, what AMP recommended was this AMP's recommendation that his Alameda Municipal Power's recommendation would be for Alameda to take no position on this matter at this time. I'm going to I'm going to stick with AMP recommendation on this, but I will say thank you very much to Mr. Alberts for always bumping into me at the farmer's market. All right. That being said, there's a motion and a second. All those in favor. I have those opposed. Motion carries 4 to 1. Thank you. Next item nine b. Consider having council endorse one or combination of options for the future structure of the Association of Area Governments, including an option to merge with the Metropolitan Transportation Commission, which requires Council action.