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Friant Dam water release under way

Posted by: Maven on October 2, 2009 at 6:43 am

friant waterFrom the Fresno Bee:

“Several piercing blasts from an air horn Wednesday evening heralded the historic release of water from Millerton Lake for the eventual restoration of the San Joaquin River.

The horn offered a five-minute warning to anyone downstream before a pair of 18-inch valves at the base of Friant Dam were opened at 5:54 p.m., sending jets of water roaring into the river at the rate of 185 cubic feet — or about 1,400 gallons — per second.

The federal Bureau of Reclamation is releasing the water as part of a settlement that Valley irrigation districts, environmentalists and the federal government approved three years ago. The goal: to restore an uninterrupted, year-round flow of water to parts of the river that have been mostly dry since Friant Dam was completed in 1944, so that salmon can return.

The water rushing through the valves is in addition to water already flowing through the Friant Dam powerhouse turbines, bringing total releases to 350 cubic feet per second. That’s what’s required under the terms of the 2006 legal settlement intended to restore a salmon run to the San Joaquin.

Earlier Wednesday, farmers and others unhappy with the river restoration staged a protest at Friant Cove, about two-thirds of a mile downstream from the dam. Calling themselves Families Protecting the Valley, the group fears the restoration efforts will eventually dry up their allocations of water from Millerton Lake and force them to pump more water from an already stressed underground water table. …”

More from the Fresno Bee by clicking here.

The release of water had been delayed throughout the day while the Bureau of Reclamation waited to receive the permit.

[Embedded video deleted due to annoying feature of starting to play automatically.]

Additional coverage:

October 2, 2009 · Filed Under San Joaquin River Restoration

Comments

One Response to “Friant Dam water release under way”

  1. robin gilbet on October 2nd, 2009 1:45 pm

    please set the embedded videos to run only when the right-pointing arrow is clicked. I went to the aquafornia website and the video started immediately, I didn’t know where in the website it was so I had to set my computer to “mute”.

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