AUBURN, Calif. — Just outside town, the steep walls of the American River canyon are stripped to bedrock. Gaping holes in the earth are plugged with tons of concrete. The river, diverted from its natural course, flows beneath it all through a tunnel half a mile long.
This is the massive foundation of the Auburn Dam, completed 13 years ago and left behind in defeat as an intended monument to the rising power of the environmental movement.
Over time, tall poplar and willow trees have grown out of crevices in the foundation as nature strives to reclaim the scarred terrain. But the Auburn Dam refuses to die.
Some 27 years after the project was first authorized by President Lyndon B. Johnson, a proposal for a new dam has again placed the rugged canyon at the center of California's never-ending battle over water and the environment.
"I don't believe the question is if there is going to be a dam," said Michael Schaefer, a Bureau of Reclamation engineer assigned to the Auburn Dam project for the past 25 years. "I believe the question is when and how big the dam will be."
The original concept was for a 700-foot-high multipurpose water storage dam. Now, a powerful alliance of Sacramento Valley interests is pushing Congress to approve a more modest dam that would protect communities downstream from catastrophic flooding.
Unlike earlier designs, the latest Auburn Dam would hold water only in times of heavy rainfall, periodically overflowing as much as 34 miles of the American River's middle and north forks.
Proponents, who liken the $698-million dam to a bucket with a hole in it, say its construction is essential to saving homes in the Sacramento flood plain from floodwaters that could rise to 20 feet.
But environmentalists contend the 425-foot-high dam is unnecessary for flood control and would cause irreparable harm to the pristine river canyon, one of the state's most popular spots for white-water rafting.
Conservationists also worry that the project would resurrect plans for the original Auburn Dam, with the flood-control barrier merely serving as a first story for a massive structure that would permanently flood 49 miles of river canyon.
"I call it a $700-million steppingstone to a big Auburn Dam," said Friends of the River activist Charles Casey as he looked out on the spectacular canyon on the north fork of the river that would be flooded.
As a child, Casey attended ribbon-cutting ceremonies for the big dams masterminded by his grandfather, former Gov. Edmund G. (Pat) Brown Sr. Now Casey fights against such projects. "In California, where we have built more than 1,000 dams of different sizes, this river represents the quality of life we need to protect," he said.
The Auburn Dam was originally authorized in 1965 as part of the vast federal water project that helped transform California into the nation's most populous state. It was planned as a multipurpose dam that would provide water for farms and cities, electricity and a recreational lake, as well as flood protection for the Sacramento Valley.
But in 1975, in the middle of construction, an earthquake struck in the north near the Oroville Dam, calling into question the safety of dams in the Sierra Nevada foothills.
As it happened, a portion of the Auburn Dam was to be built on a small earthquake fault. The fault line is visible today, a white stripe of quartz running through the gray bedrock of the foundation.
Federal engineers demonstrated that the fault was inactive, but environmentalists seized on the issue--and the existence of active faults nearby--to win a delay in further funding. In one of the last acts of the Jimmy Carter Administration, Interior Secretary Cecil D. Andrus ruled that the dam could be safely built but called for new studies on the environmental effects.
In another blow to the project, President Ronald Reagan changed the way the government financed such projects. No longer would the federal government pay for dams to provide water and power; federal money would be available only for flood-control projects.
To this day, the Auburn Dam remains a federally authorized project but with no money to fund it. On the rim of the canyon above the site sits the "Auburn Construction Office," where employees of the Bureau of Reclamation await the day they will be directed to resume construction.
Halting the Auburn Dam was an important symbol for the environmental movement of the 1970s. While other wild rivers were dammed and canyons flooded, the north and middle forks of the American River remain largely untouched, attracting some 500,000 visitors a year.
In 1986, a major storm sent floodwaters surging down the river. The swollen river burst through a temporary 265-foot-high cofferdam that had been built at Auburn to aid in construction, washing tons of debris downstream.
