Save the California Delta Alliance (STCDA)

Help Stop the Delta Tunnels! Please send in your comments about the California Water Fix (aka Delta Tunnels) now. Even if you have sent some before, it’s fine to send more.

Attached are some bullet points to help you write comments. Please BCC to our noDeltaGates email box below so we have a copy, since the BDCP has been refusing to post comments on-line as they are supposed to do.

To comment on the California WaterFix plan itself, email BDCPComments@icfi.com (Note: This will also send STCDA a copy for safekeeping to our NoDeltaGates site – optional).

COMMENTS DUE BY OCTOBER 30th.

Bullet Points are at: https://nodeltagates.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/bullet-points.pdf

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.