Save the California Delta Alliance (STCDA)

BDCP Marketing Campaign is now in Full Swing

While the citizens in Northern California who will be most affected by the Bay Delta “Conservation” Plan (BDCP) Peripheral Tunnels get “checkbox” public outreach meetings, here’s what the citizens in Southern California are getting to “sell” them on the idea:

We’ve been asking for regional BDCP Workshops or local meetings for months. Five regional workshops and 75 information meetings are now planned in Southern California. Almost 1 million “educational inserts” (myth marketing) included in LA newspapers.

We need the Press

When this much money is being spent on marketing the myths and hype from the tunnel proponents, Northern California must rely on the Press to expose the truth about the tunnels. Northern California groups cannot match the money being spent by the water contractors to sell their Peripheral Tunnel idea.

Grassroots community organizations like Save the California Delta Alliance, environmental organizations and others have been working around-the-clock trying to get the word out, get the press involved, and inform the citizens of Northern California about the Bay Delta “Conservation” Plan (BDCP) Peripheral Tunnels and the impacts they will cause to our area of the state.

Yet still, many attendees at last Saturday’s Tomato Festival in Brentwood had no idea what the Tunnels were or how they would be affected!

What is being done by the State or the BDCP to educate the people who will be effected by the Tunnels? Nothing!

The BDCP public outreach group announced “In Delta” meetings in places like Brentwood and others to allow Delta citizens to come in “as a resource for Delta citizens and community members who are in need of additional information or would like to provide input to the BDCP effort” (according to their website). The actual events were not informative as reported last week People Showed Up for the In-Delta Meeting. We got no answers and DWR reps tried to keep Central Valley Times reporter/photographer Gene Beley from taping the public meeting – see Brown Administration Bars Reporter From Filming Public Meeting On Tunnels.

In the North, attempts are being made to keep people from even knowing about the tunnels with removal of signs and not allowing the Press at public meetings while the water contractor’s marketing machine is busily trying to sell the masses in the South on the fallacy of how good the tunnels will be for them.

Thank you to the Central Valley Business Times, Daily Kos and reporters like Gene Beley, Alex Breitler, and Dan Batcher (and others – sorry if I missed you) who go out on a limb and run controversial pieces criticizing the BDCP and exposing the myths.

We now need even more hard-hitting investigative reporting in major newspapers and on the TV to expose the facts behind the myths to all Californians.