🚀 go-pugleaf

The Auburn Dam pork barrel project sponsored by Representatives 
Doolittle and Fazio will waste a billion dollars of taxpayer money, 
destroy a great mountain river and replace it with a warm, stagnant 
reservoir.  For more information see:
http://www.infovillage.com/FriendsOfTheRiver/CNSVALRT.html

I encourage everybody to edit the sample letter below to suit your own 
ideas, sign it and send it to your US Senators and US Congressional 
Representative.  Please forward this to all others who may be 
interested.

I will be happy to send additional info to those who request:
* information on H.R. 2951
* Auburn Dam editorial from SF Chronicle


Thanks, 
Bruce Thomas <brthomas@ucdavis.edu>

**************************************
Honorable Dianne Feinstein 
United States Senate
Washington, D.C. 20510
(202)224-3841
<senator@feinstein.senate.gov>

Dear Senator Feinstein, 

        Please support the bill H.R. 2951 by Congressman Thomas Petri 
(R-WI) entitled "A bill to protect United States taxpayers by 
preventing the use of Federal Funds for construction of a dam on the 
American River at Auburn, California."  

� The Auburn Dam was described as a PORK BARREL PROJECT by The San 
Francisco Chronicle in their editorial on Oct. 17, 1995.  We cannot 
hope to balance the Federal budget if we continue to waste tax dollars 
on projects of this type.  The Chronicle said, "Sacramento needs flood 
protection - not a concrete monstrosity that oinks."  

� I support Folsom Dam modifications and levee improvements to provide 
the cost-effective flood control that is needed for existing 
structures in the Sacramento area.  No new residential or commercial 
development should be permitted in the floodplain areas.  

� The American River Canyon and surrounding watershed have unique 
historical, recreational, and ecological values.  Experts at the U.S. 
Fish and Wildlife Service have said that environmental impacts from 
the project cannot be mitigated because of the high quality and unique 
riparian and canyon habitat that eventually would be lost behind an 
Auburn dam.  

� I oppose the cynical bait-and-switch tactics of Congressman 
Doolittle and Fazio who support federal funding for a "flood control 
dam," but then plan to immediately convert this facility into a water 
storage reservoir.  Having a reservoir behind the dam reduces its 
capacity for flood control.  When this reservoir is partially filled 
it will provide no more flood control than the less expensive Folsom 
Dam and levee modifications described above.  Somebody is lying about 
how much flood control is really needed.  

� President Bill Clinton has said that the era of big government is 
over.  The Federal Government should not pay for a luxurious excess of 
flood control protection.  If local interests want a reservoir to 
support local development, then this should be constructed entirely 
with local taxpayer money.  

� I oppose creation of an Auburn Dam/Reservoir on an earthquake fault.  
The engineers who gave us the Folsom Dam breakdown of 1995 and the SF 
Bay Bridge collapse in the earthquake of 1989 cannot be trusted to put 
a dam at Auburn.  A reservoir at this site will reduce our safety, not 
increase it.  

�  Conservation, reclamation, and water marketing are the most 
cost-effective solutions to our current and future water supply issues 
in California.  

************************************
cc: Congressman Thomas Petri, <tompetri@hr.house.gov>
     Senator Barbara Boxer, <senator@boxer.senate.gov>
    Representative Vic Fazio, <dacaucus@hr.house.gov>
     Mr. Richard Bowers, American Whitewater Affiliation, 
<72732.401@compuserve.com>
********************
Representative Vic Fazio									(if you live in a different 
U. S. House of Representatives   congressional district
Washington, D.C. 20515						use this address to write to your 
********************									local Representative)
Honorable Barbara Boxer 
United States Senate
Washington, D.C. 20510