The editorials are coming out of the woodwork now. Wonder if someone is paying for them to do these or they are getting the “bright idea” on their own.
Today’s was an opinion piece in the Sacramento Bee called “Brown’s new Delta fix makes all sorts of economic sense,” by Betty Jo Toccoli, President of the California Small Business Association.
She says that the California Small Business Association supports the plan because the availability of a reliable water supply is of great importance to all of our members.
What she obviously doesn’t understand is that her Small Business Association members are getting nothing, nada, squat out of the “California Water Fix.”
She goes so far as to say the opponents of the plan’s economics “don’t pan out,” referring to Dr. Jeffrey Michaels, an independent economist at the University of the Pacific. Instead she quotes as truth/fact economist David Sunding, who is paid by the DWR and has been slanting the economic reports in the tunnels’ favor for years.
I love this part (it is often repeated) – that we must consider the “economics of a catastrophic failure. According to an analysis by leading UC Davis professors, the old dirt levees that protect water supplies have a 64 percent probability of collapse or catastrophic failure in the next 50 years. The Department of Water Resources analyzed the economic consequences of multiple levees failing should a large earthquake occur. Water exports would be cut off for months, if not years. The total cost of disruption to our water system would cost the economy $30 billion to $40 billion over five years – more than twice the total construction costs of the pipelines.”
OK – now, really. So she bought into the faulty (no pun intended) Earthquake Bogey and reports of failing levees. I actually love that one. Because if the levees are so precarious and the state is not doing anything to fix them, then the state is risking hundreds of thousands of lives of people living in the Delta. And, even if true, the water exports would NOT be cut off for years, according to true scientists. Bogus. Stupid. Wrong.
I wish these people wouldn’t write about what they know nothing about. People like Betty Jo Toccoli, President of the California Small Business Association, should stick to what they know instead of buying the hype being put out by the the DWR and Gov. Brown in support of the Corporate Farmers (not small businesses) and Big L.A. Developers (again not small businesses) about why they want the “wonderful” California Water Fix. Instead, she should consider that the Delta Tunnels will destroy acres and acres of fertile, family-owned (small business) Delta farmland, impact Delta communities, ruin Delta recreation (and related small businesses), not to mention the most important, destroy the salmon runs off the entire coast of California and Oregon (commercial fishermen). Why? For big business profits. Profits from more almonds. Profits from re-selling water.
There’s nothing there to help small businesses. It’s only to make the very, very rich richer.
Save the California Delta Alliance (STCDA) 
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