Congress approved development of the Auburn Dam 43 years ago. Environmental activists have managed to delay this vital water infrastructure project for the past 30 years. Now, unless state bureaucrats can be persuaded to give the project another chance, it will be permanently scrapped.

With Sacramento and the rest of Northern California suffering from record drought, it is time for common sense to prevail. This project is simply too important to be sacrificed at the altar of environmental extremism and bureaucratic torpor.

The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation obtained water rights for the dam from the state 38 years ago. Under state law, those rights expire if not exercised—even if they have been deliberately frustrated by environmental zealots. Now the State Water Resources Control Board is claiming that Reclamation should be “timed out.” This will mean that Reclamation would forfeit its water rights, forever dooming development of the dam.

We are reluctant to embrace conspiracy theories, but the State Water Resources Control Board’s inadequate notice in this matter prompts our suspicion. Last week, it announced peremptorily that a public hearing would be held on the revocation of water rights on July 21, with a pre-hearing conference scheduled for June 4. This short notice has all the appearance of a premeditated, quick kill.

The state wants to snatch away the federal government’s water rights in the Auburn Dam because it claims that the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation has failed “to commence, prosecute with due diligence and complete the work necessary to appropriate water.” The irony, of course, is that every time Reclamation has sought to “appropriate water,” they have been blocked by environmental activists. Reclamation intends to fight the revocation, and the hearing was granted at its request.

Meanwhile, record dry weather in March and April and a shrinking Sierra Nevada snowpack after a record-dry 2006-07 snow year have put Sacramentans in peril of mandatory water rationing. March and April were the driest in the northern Sierra since 1921.
This would therefore seem like an encouraging time to begin capturing water for use by Sacramentans. Unless a cabal of state bureaucrats and river preservationists take it away from us, the Auburn Dam is our last and best hope.