Rodgers Crossing Dam was a major dam proposed for theKings River inCentral California. The dam would have been situated at the unincorporated community of Rodgers Crossing inFresno County, in the foothills of theSierra Nevada 30 miles (48 km) east ofFresno. The project was pushed during the 1960s and 1970s by the Kings River Conservation District (KRCD) to provide flood control and irrigation water supply. The estimated annual yield would be 100,000 acre-feet (0.12 km3).[1]
The purpose was to nearly double the storage capacity on the Kings River, as the existingPine Flat Dam is unable to provide the high degree of flood protection for which it was originally built.[2] The original plan called for a concretegravity dam 640 feet (200 m) high, which would have formed a reservoir flooding 11 miles (18 km) of the Kings River, nearly up to the boundary ofKings Canyon National Park. The reservoir would have a capacity of 737,000 acre-feet (0.909 km3), and the dam would have ahydroelectric generating capacity of 310megawatts.[1]
During the 1980s, the Rodgers Crossing dam was dropped due to poor economic justifications, and pushback from conservationists and the tourism sector who did not want to see the Kings River, a popular whitewater run, flooded by a reservoir.[3] In 1987, a compromise was reached as the Kings River was incorporated into theNational Wild and Scenic Rivers System, with the Rodgers Crossing dam site placed under "unified federal protection" that would require an act of Congress to overturn if the dam were to be built in the future.[4]