Quote
chick-on
That may be true... but I think many people don't realize that all the water in Don Pedro...
none of that goes to San Franscisco. Additionally there are a number of power plants that would
no longer be producing... and all the boating on Don Pedro would probably have to cease...
along with the removal of the House boats.
San Francisco owns 730,000 acre-feet of storage in Don Pedro, for which it paid half of the construction costs. This is twice the storage of HH reservoir. So, while Don Pedro isn't directly connected to the HH system, it allows SF to divert additional water upriver while still meeting their obligations under the Raker Act to the Turlock and Modesto irrigation districts, which hold the senior water rights to the Tuolumne.
Also, even without the HH dam, all the Tuolumne power plants would continue to operate. Only Kirkwood, which is the powerplant fed by HH, would be significantly impacted--if I recall, a 50% reduction in output if water continues to be diverted from just below the damsite into Canyon Tunnel. The changes in output at Holm (Cherry), Moccasin, and Don Pedro depend on where replacement storage for HH is located--less when this storage is added to Cherry/Eleanor, and more when it's outside the Tuolumne system (e.g. groundwater exchanges in the central valley).
Lastly, boating at Don Pedro would be possibly affected only under restoration scenarios that incorporate a direct Don Pedro-HH connection. This is the configuration that Sarah Null proposed in her thesis which kicked off the current round of restoration discussions. My sense is that the Don Pedro intertie is a non-starter politically--mostly due to issues between SF and Turlock/Modesto. It's more likely that instead, a Cherry/Eleanor intertie--between Holm powerplant and Early Intake--would be used, mainly to maintain water quality and minimize losses in Holm power generation. With the Cherry intertie, boating would probably have to be restricted on Cherry (and Eleanor)--especially if a filtration waiver is received for those drainages.