Water Contractor Nevada Irrigation District Is Playing Political Games with Salmon at Its Hemphill Dam

Hello Everyone, We thank NID for cleaning up the mess it created at Hemphill Dam as a result of two years of unsuccessful tweaking in futile efforts to get salmon over the Hemphill Dam. All NID has done is return Hemphill Dam to its state of being the formidable barrier to salmon passage it has been since 1989, when NID replaced the blowout dam from being washed out by flood waters with the unpermitted monstrosity we see today. There is legal action pending involving this unpermitted dam replacement that is currently playing out. Hemphill Dam has prevented salmon from reaching prime spawning grounds in Auburn Ravine since 1989 SARSAS met with the NID General Manager in March of this year; he told us all permits would be garnered by October 15 so the second year of his three year plan to get some salmon over Hemphill Dam would be installed. The salmon arrived October 15 and according to CaF&W, NID applied for its permit November 2, at which time it hired Stantec to do the impossible – get the permit while salmon were immediately below the dam. This action does not appear to be a carefully crafted plan by NID management to make a sincere attempt to get salmon over Hemphill Dam. CaF&W would never issue a permit for any dam construction, while salmon are spawning, which is just basic logic. Rem further states, “We are currently negotiating with the Foothill Water Network regarding a filing with the SWRCB and Hemphill is caught in that process. I would imagine that as soon as those talks are complete we would begin working on a long-term solution to our problem. I know this is frustrating, but this problem wasn’t created overnight and unfortunately it can’t be solved overnight either.” Rem told SARSAS a number of times if it would withdraw the protest against the several water rights violations that NID has committed, then it would start work on a fish ladder or dam removal at Hemphill so what he is referring to is a continues attempt to pressure SARSAS to get Foothill Water Network, of which SARSAS is a member, to withdraw our protest for these several NID water rights violations. That protest will never be withdrawn as we told NID each time the subject was broached. When money is mentioned as an obstacle to fish passage at Hemphill, remember that on August 13 of this year, Rem spent $ 488,000 as filing fees to the State Work Board for his new NID Parker Dam on Bear River, one of the most impacted rivers in California, to build another dam that will obviously negative impact the environment but greatly increase the bottom line of NID. In his own words, the Parker Reservoir will cost $160 Million. While NID have proven to be anything but good custodians of their two dams on Auburn Ravine, Rem refuses to discuss fish passage on Gold Hill Dam with SARSAS, why would the public believe NID would be anything but a similar questionable custodian to the Parker Dam? Nothing has been done by Remleh Scherzinger or NID to improve fish passage on its dams on Auburn Ravine. Thank you,