This Zombie Dam Project Underscores California’s Dilemma Over Water

Despite what you may have gleaned from television and the movies, zombies aren’t always constituted of flesh and blood. Sometimes they come in concrete and rock. Exhibit A is a $3-billion dam proposal on the San Joaquin River known as Temperance Flat. The project’s beneficiaries, chiefly growers in the San Joaquin Valley, have struggled for years to justify its construction. Its critics say they’ve done so by exaggerating the probable water yield from the dam and reservoir while understating its negative impact on the region’s ecology and cultural and recreational environmental impacts, and overstating its recreational resources.