Huffman Blasts $40 Million in Taxpayer Funds for Illegal Shasta Dam Raise

Huffman Blasts $40 Million in Taxpayer Funds for Illegal Shasta Dam Raise

Washington, D.C.- Today, Ranking Member Jared Huffman (D-Calif.) issued the following statement after the Department of the Interior announced $40 million in taxpayer funds for planning and preconstruction activities to raise Shasta Dam.

"The proposal to raise Shasta Dam is a stubbornly unlawful, wasteful, and destructive boondoggle that refuses to die, and it is past time we bury it for good. It is illegal under California law. Raising Shasta Dam has been blocked by state courts, opposed by California's Attorney General, and killed in Congress before.

"Republicans keep resurrecting this zombie project for one and only one reason: because the Westlands Water District - one of the most politically powerful players in Western water - wants it. And the Republican budget bill threw out the longstanding rule that water districts have to help pay for projects they benefit from, meaning taxpayers will end up getting stuck with a nearly $2 billion bill if the project moves forward. So much for fiscal responsibility.

"While Republicans hand out favors to well-connected agricultural interests, the people who pay the price are the Winnemem Wintu Tribe. Shasta Dam already drowned their homeland, their villages, and their sacred sites. Now this administration wants to flood even more of what the Tribe has left.

"Republicans love to talk about government waste. Here it is: $40 million for a project that violates state law, benefits heavily subsidized special interests unwilling to foot even part of the bill, and destroys ancestral lands and native salmon. I will keep fighting to stop it."

Background

The Bureau of Reclamation's proposal would raise Shasta Dam by 18.5 feet at an estimated cost of $1.8 billion. The project is illegal under California's Wild and Scenic Rivers Act, which protects the McCloud River that would be flooded by the project. Trump and Republicans' One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBA) provided $1 billion to the Bureau for surface water storage projects with all cost-sharing and reimbursement requirements eliminated, a break from more than a century of reclamation law. Today's announcement directs $40 million of those funds toward planning and preconstruction for the raise.

The original construction of Shasta Dam flooded the homeland of the Winnemem Wintu Tribe. A dam raise would flood additional village sites, sacred ceremony grounds, and land needed for an ongoing state-federal effort to reintroduce endangered Chinook salmon to the McCloud River, an effort the Tribe has led in partnership with state and federal wildlife agencies since 2023.

###

• Print
• Email
• Tweet