The US Bureau of Reclamation (USBR) is seeking public comment on the proposed Milltown Hill project, which involves building a dam on Elk creek in Douglas County, Oregon.
The proposed structure would be a 56.7m high RCC dam that would create a 29.7Mm3 reservoir in Elk creek, a tributary of Umpqua river.
Douglas County recently decided to reactivate its Small Reclamation Projects Act loan, originally approved in 1994 for US$31.4M. Public opinion on the move will be accepted by USBR until 8 September.
Fourteen years have passed since the project’s last Environmental Impact Statement in 1992, but the structure was never built for a variety of reasons. One factor was that the dam would have needed to provide fish passage for the Umpqua river cutthroat trout – which is now no longer under the Endangered Species Act.