Posted on 05/24/2015 3:07:47 PM PDT by infool7
Fremont (KRON) — Fremont police say vandals attacked an inflatable dam on Alameda Creek that resulted in the loss of nearly 50 million gallons of water.
Police believe that those responsible entered a restricted area sometime on Thursday morning and intentionally damaged the dam.
“The dam, which is instrumental to the Alameda County Water District’s water supply operations, suffered irreversible damage,” police said.
According to police, more than 150 acre-feet of water – or 49 million gallons – washed past the destroyed dam and into the San Francisco Bay.
With California enduring a crippling four-year drought and no signs of immediate relief, the water in the Alameda Creek was to have been percolated into the Niles Cone Groundwater Basin for use by residents and businesses in Fremont, Newark, and Union City as a critical water supply.
“This amount of water is enough to supply the needs of approximately 500 homes for one year,” police said.
District staff was able to quickly open upstream diversions, allowing water which would have been impounded behind the dam to flow into nearby groundwater recharge facilities, thus eliminating further water loss.
“This is a very significant loss of water under any circumstances, and more so in the drought conditions we are experiencing,” said ACWD General Manager Robert Shaver. “It is an utterly senseless, destructive, and wasteful thing to do.”
The District does not believe it will have a long-term impact on its water supply operations.
The vandalized dam is one of a pair ACWD maintains on Alameda Creek. The dams are large, heavy-duty devices, which can be inflated to impound needed water or deflated to allow water to flow through the creek in storm conditions.
Anyone with information about this crime is encouraged to contact Detective A. Ceniceros at Aceniceros@fremont.gov or (510) 790-6900.
No big deal! Just vandals pulling a childish prank. Move on. Sheesh.
Indeed. I forgot that those also come in quiet electric-portable models. My chainsaw makes far too much noise.
I use the noisy chainsaw for the serious stuff, but I do have one of those battery models and it's a really handy little man's toy.
I haven't had the need to try to cut up the dam on the farm pond with it though.
'Course the farmpond dam isn't made of rubber and would seriously compromise any chainsaw that tackles it.. ;-)
A backhoe on the other hand..
Vandalism huh... is that like work place violence?
He better hope no one flushes
Oil pouring into the Santa Barbara coastline.. Broken damn in Alameda.. The enviro-wackos apparently want to nudge Agenda 21 even faster now. Look for INSIDERS as the culprits here, looking for more excuses to realize their Agenda 21 dreams.
“Restricted Area”—What security moron thought that would protect an inflatable dam?
I doubt terrorists would do something so small.....in the big scheme of things. They would have blown the entire dam up.
Of course, for those who appreciate and luxuriate in the Freedoms that our once prosperous Republic assured us, I suppose it could be technically categorized as “terrorism”.
Dam vandals.
Last week we had about 0.3 inches of precip. My property gathered a little more than 1 million gallons of water.
Fix the dam and shut up!
... build a real dam for goodness sake.
we’ d likely have heard from them by now... if this was their work
It’s all water over the dam now...err...
concrete! cement is just one component of it
You’re right and I should know better.
The state has dumped over a trillion gallons into the bay per year since 2008 to protect smelt.
Let's put a trillion gallons of water in perspective: That's 70 gallons per day per person for the 40 million residents of CA.
The amount lost is absolute peanuts compared to the amount released from Folsom dam to help “flush the delta”.
Thanks infool7. And I thought the same thing -- this is a terrorist act. The perps should be keelhauled, then bloodied a bit, and thrown to the sharks.
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