State continues to leave Butte County underwater with Oroville Dam

Growing up, Oroville was the kind of small California town where people knew their neighbors and children learned the Feather River by heart. Families fished its banks, swam its currents, and built ordinary lives around an extraordinary river.

That was until the 1950s, when the State of California came with a proposition.

Right here in Butte County, they planned to build the nation’s tallest dam, serving as the headwaters and keystone facility of the State Water Project (SWP). Operated by the California Department of Water Resources (DWR), the SWP is one of the nation’s largest water management systems. It captures water from the Feather River and sends it south to supply water to 27 million Californians and irrigate 750,000 acres of farmland.

The state understood the infrastructure would impose a significant burden on Butte County, so it offered us a vision of mutual gain: grandiose attractions and recreation facilities designed to accommodate 12.5 million visitors each year, creating an economic engine that would help offset our costs of hosting the dam.

Imagine what that sounded like to a working town in Northern California: We would give something up, but we would build something together. That bargain never materialized. The state got the dam. It got the water and the power to fuel California’s $4 trillion economy. Butte County got a fraction of the recreation promised and a public asset occupying 41,000 acres that are removed from our local property-tax base.

While we aren’t allowed to collect taxes on that land, we’re still expected to maintain roads and provide law enforcement, emergency response, and public services that keep those areas functioning and safe. The county estimates the resulting fiscal burden at about $20 million each year. That’s $20 million each year that we can’t use to invest in other parts of the community.

When Butte County has challenged that imbalance, we’ve been ignored, dismissed, and left to read DWR’s half-truths in the press. Now, as DWR seeks a new federal license to operate the dam, it tells the community the new license will deliver more than $1 billion in investments to the local area. What they omit is that most of those dollars cover decades of operations, maintenance, regulatory, and other existing obligations the state would incur anyway. That’s not a billion-dollar investment in the local area; that’s money spent to ensure continued water deliveries to Southern California.

That distinction matters. So does the history of the negotiations. DWR has emphasized that Butte County did not sign the settlement. The missing context is why. The county participated but didn’t sign, as DWR wouldn’t meaningfully address the county’s concerns. While others at the table presented their issues for hours, we were capped at 30 minutes and then offered pennies on the dollar. That’s not negotiation; it’s dismissal. We did not walk away; we really were not allowed to participate in a meaningful way.

This entire process is less about collaboration with the host community and more about protecting the governor’s priorities: extracting as much water as possible from us and preserving the economic value the dam creates for the state. It’s not about restoring balance to the host community that bears the dam’s risk. It’s not about safety, even after the near-catastrophic Spillway Failure. It’s about money. It’s about ensuring developers in Southern California keep building homes in places with no local water.

I will never stop asking the questions the state seems determined to avoid: What about the recreation opportunities our community was promised? What about the families whose safety depends on how this dam is operated? What about compensating local taxpayers for the public services this massive state facility requires? If the dam generates billions of kilowatt-hours of electricity every year, why are the people living in its shadow paying some of the highest electricity rates in California?

This is not about stopping Southern California from receiving water. The next license for Oroville Dam may govern this project for another half-century. That makes this moment bigger than an old grievance. We are asking for a balanced deal. We are asking for honesty. We are asking for safety and transparency. We are asking the state to stop misrepresenting what was promised, stop blaming the county for rejecting an unacceptable deal, and start negotiating with the people who live here as though our lives and our future matter as much as the water flowing south.

Bill Connelly, Butte County District 1 Supervisor