California river groups call for strong drought actions

The Friends of the River group joined several other conservation organizations to call for more efforts to support groundwater storage, instead of building more dams in California.

Eric Wesselman is the Executive Director of Friends of the River says, “Reduce, reuse, recycle. Let’s do that, let’s do more of that and there’s just tremendous potential. And if we want to store water and bank it for the future. The biggest reservoir we have in California is underneath our feet, our ground water system.”

The group applauded the state for boosting urban water conservation. Wesselman says he’d like to see more sustainable water policies and more efforts to recycle water instead of relying on rivers. He says more than half of the rivers in California are being diverted for human use.

Wesselman also says, “Unfortunately a lot of decision makers in the state are advocating for large new dams or water storage projects. And if they would work that would be one thing but the reality is we already have 1,400 dams in California. And building a couple more isn’t going to work.”

“The Public Policy Institute of California came out with a study and found that the five big dams under consideration would cost at least $9 billion and would just add 1 percent to our state total water supply.” says Wesselman. “So they just don’t pencil out. Let’s use that money to promote more modern 21st century water solutions for the drought.”

And the rivers that are facing danger? “There are efforts to repeal protections for the Merced River and the McCloud River. And we are seeing efforts to repeal water quality in general throughout the state, in order to in theory, help ease the drought. But it’s really just making sure it’s an effort to take more water out of our rivers.”