Save the California Delta Alliance (STCDA)

The Delta Independent Science Board has completed its review of the California WaterFix EIR/EIS. The entire review is attached.

The ISB report says the EIR/EIS “contains a wealth of information but lacks completeness and clarity in applying science to far-reaching policy decisions.” In other words, all those pages and pages and pages yet still lacks the required detail and information.

In particular, “Details about the adaptive-management process, collaborative science,” etc. That “adaptive-management” is where the whole thing hinges. The state keeps saying, “Trust us. We’ll manage the tunnels appropriately and not take more water than we should.” Yet, as we all know, that has not been the case in the past. For ten or twenty years they have extracted more water than the system could support, causing the salmon and other fish populations to crash. During the drought they moved way to much water from the North to the South and now the reservoirs in the North are at their lowest points ever, threatening community drinking water and upstream salmon hatcheries while the L.A. reservoirs are still full. With that history, no one should trust them.

The report lists failure to demonstrate “Due regard for several aspects of habitat restoration … and the strategy of avoiding damage to existing wetlands,” and insufficient analysis including the “effects of the proposed project on San Joaquin Valley agriculture.”

Plus, importantly, no comparison of the proposed alternatives.

The summary concludes with, “These interdependent issues of statewide importance warrant an environmental impact assessment that is more complete, comprehensive, and comprehensible than the Current Draft.”

As reported today in the L.A. Times, an agreement was reached yesterday with the U.S. Government and Westlands. (The agreement must still be approved by Congress.)

For years Westlands has refused to pay it’s portion of the Central Valley Project (Delta water shipped to them) because the U.S. Gov’t was suppose to build a drain for their land. When it was discovered that their land was selenium-tainted (remember the Kesterson Bird Deformities?) it would have cost $3 billion to drain properly. That stalemate has been going on for years.

With the new settlement, reclamation bureau would be relieved of the court-ordered requirement to provide drainage to Westlands cropland. The district would permanently retire 100,000 acres of ill-drained fields and agree to a cap on water deliveries that amounts to 75% of its current contract amount. HOWEVER, the government will lift limits on the size of Westlands farms eligible for subsidized water deliveries. And it would give the district an open-ended water contract that wouldn’t be subject to periodic renewal or negotiation.

Westlands will, however, still be subject to shortage with junior water rights as they are now.

A solution to the water shortage is to close down the damaged Westlands Water District lands from farming. This agreement is going the wrong way.

Rep. Jerry McNerney (D-Stockton) called it “an outrageous windfall for Westlands.”

Read the entire story here.

One of the steps necessary in approval of the tunnels is a permit from the Army Corps of Engineers. The Corps has opened a comment period but it is only for 30 days and with no public hearings. Michael Brodsky, our STCDA Legal Council, wrote them an email this morning, which is below.

We’re asking people to send in a comment to the Corps requesting
(1) an extension of the comment period and
(2) that they hold public hearings.

Mr. Brodsky requested an extension to January 10, 2016 and that they hold 3 public hearings, 2 of them to be in Delta communities.

Emails to the Corps should have the subject as:
Request to extend comment period SPK-2008-00861 and hold public hearings

And should be emailed to:
Zachary.M.Simmons@usace.army.mil

His email sent this morning below can serve as talking points as well as anything else anyone wants to add.
—————————————————————————————–

Dear Mr. Simmons,

This office represents Save the California Delta Alliance. We are writing to request an extension of the comment period on this project until January 10, 2016. We also request that the Corps hold three public hearings, with two of them located within Delta communities.

The Water Fix project is the most significant permitting undertaking that the Corps will experience in California in the twenty-first century. The project is highly controversial and portends the environmental fate of the largest estuary on the west coast of the Americas.

Water Fix also represents a sudden change in direction for federal and state agencies with regard to water supply infrastructure and environmental commitments. For the last seven years, state and federal agencies have promised repeatedly that any new point of diversion and new conveyance facilities would be part of a federally approved habitat conservation plan, as defined by the federal Endangered Species Act.

“We will meet the gold standard, or we won’t do it,” has been the refrain and reply to all environmental and public interest concerns. That long standing promise has suddenly been abandoned and massive new diversions will be made possible by the Tunnel Project without any accompanying habitat conservation plan.

This kind of drastic last-minute change in a mega-diversion project and its public interest implications cannot be adequately addressed within a 30-day comment period.

Public hearings are also necessary to allow the thousands of local residents in the Delta to adequately address their concerns to the Corps.

We believe that the currently proposed 30-day comment period is legally inadequate and constitutes a procedural injury within the meaning of applicable federal law.

Please give serious and immediate consideration to extending the comment period and providing for public hearings.

Thank you for your consideration.

Sincerely,

Another good article in the news today:

In the midst of the drought, many California counties are reporting record agricultural revenues, farm labor has actually increased by some measures, and fruit and vegetable prices have generally remained steady. In short, California agriculture appears to be more resilient than the doom-and-gloom stories propagated by agribusinesses and their supporters in Congress.

How? They have dramatically increased groundwater pumping.

On the other hand, This is causing roads and canals to buckle, causing hundreds of millions of dollars (or more) in damages to public infrastructure. Rural disadvantaged communities, households have seen their drinking water wells dry up completely.

What’s more, extensive lobbying by agribusiness has led to waivers of the minimum environmental protections for fish and wildlife in California’s rivers and streams, driving some salmon runs and other native fish and wildlife to the brink of extinction so that farmers and cities can divert even more water during the drought.

Read more here …

Good article in the L.A. Times:
Across California this summer, residents have been racking up water conservation numbers that defy expectations — a 27% reduction in June, followed by 31.3% in July.

Perhaps more impressive than the percentage figures, however, is the actual volume of water saved over two months: 414,800 acre-feet.

That’s a lot of water — more than twice the amount projected to be available annually from two proposed storage facilities that would cost a combined $3.5 billion to build: the Temperance Flat Dam on the San Joaquin River and an expansion of Shasta Dam.

“The reality is that there are so many soft paths that we can take that might have a lot less environmental impact and be a lot less expensive, and still meet our future demand,” said Newsha Ajami, director of urban water policy for Stanford’s Water in the West initiative. “This is probably a smarter tack than building more infrastructure, and moving more water around long distances.”

Of course Lester Snow, Delta Tunnel advocate, disagrees. He says “”Conservation is one of the tools, but I would not want to count on it completely.”

Hopefully, though, the advocates opposed to major infrastructure projects to move water around and who propose, instead, regional self-sufficiency, will win out. Else they will destroy the Delta with a huge construction project resulting in empty tunnels many years as snow in the Sierras becomes less prevelant.

There’s a new petition to sign to oppose the California WaterFix and the Delta Tunnels. Sign before the October 30th comment period deadline.

To personalize it, submit your own thoughts and comments.

I signed!

Bill Wells, Executive Director of the Delta Chamber of Commerce and author of the regular “Bay and Delta Yachtsman” magazine’s “Delta Rat” articles, has requested that anyone who is available this Friday to attend a meeting in Sacramento about the Invasive Week problem in the Delta and voice your opinion. Also please forward this to other interested persons. Here’s the meeting info and agenda – Click Here.

Bill’s email said:

Our governor Jerry Brown and resource secretary John Laird have totally dropped the ball on this rolling disaster. As near as we can tell area boaters are picking up the full tab for the Division of Boating & Waterways effort to “control” invasive plants. Local marina owners and business people are spending their own funds to try to stop this scourge. It looks like about $15 million is funded for the effort and about $50 million is needed. It is time for all “stakeholders” to start paying their fair share. The water districts that export water from the Delta should pick up the lions share of the expense and the Corps of Engineers charged with keeping navigable waterways open needs to provide adequate funding too.

We have gotten to this point because of inept management of our water resources in the past and we need to put a stop to it now before it totally destroys the Delta. We need a complete audit of the Natural Resources Agency and in the future we need far better oversight of the agencies charged with keeping our waterways clear.

For more background and why the weed clean-up should be paid for by the water contractors who are exporting too much water causing the issue and not just the boaters here in the Delta stuck with the issue, see Gene Beley’s film of Gary Rogers interviewing DBW Director Chris Conlin regarding invasive plants in the Delta.

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.

Published here.

State contractors have readied plans to acquire as many as 300 farms in the California delta by eminent domain to make room for a pair of massive, still-unapproved water tunnels proposed by Gov. Jerry Brown, according to documents obtained by opponents of the tunnels.

Farmers whose parcels were listed and mapped in the 160-page property-acquisition plan expressed dismay at the advanced planning for the project, which would build 30-mile-long tunnels in the delta formed by the San Joaquin and Sacramento rivers.

“What really shocks is we’re fighting this and we’re hoping to win,” said Richard Elliot, who grows cherries, pears and other crops on delta land farmed by his family since the 1860s. “To find out they’re sitting in a room figuring out this eminent domain makes it sound like they’re going to bully us … and take what they want.”

Read more here.