This is regarding the planned Dominguez Dam and Reservoir and Dede Ranzenberger’s letter to the editor on March 20.
The Dominguez Project would be a wonderful asset to the Grand Valley, for recreation as well as a source for municipal and industrial water. However, although negative impact to several species of endangered fish and a rare endangered cactus which grows on the canyon rim were a consideration, those issues were not the reason that the project was shelved.

As a member of the Bureau of Reclamation team which completed the feasibility study in the early 1980s, it is my recollection the primary reason that the project did not go forward was cost related. Specifically the high cost of relocating the railroad from along the river in the canyon to the rim, roughly parallel to Highway 50.

The project costs far exceeded the benefits, including recreation, municipal and industrial water and electrical power generation. When the president’s team compared he benefit-cost ratios of all of the power generation projects in the nation that were on the list at that time, the Dominguez Project was too far down to justify further consideration.

Since the railroad is still there and costs have probably gone up at least as much as benefits, the benefit-cost ratio probably hasn’t improved. It would be great to keep that water here for us to use or sell to California, we just have to find a way to pay for the means to do so.

RON JOHNSON
Grand Junction

This entry was posted on Friday, March 21st, 2008 at 9:09 am and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.