Save the California Delta Alliance (STCDA)

People have been asking me “What’s happening with the 2-Gates and other Delta projects?” While we made great progress delaying the 2-Gates project, there are many projects moving ahead and legislation to re-start 2-Gates being debated.

Since our Discovery Bay meeting March 1st, the STCDA (NoDeltaGates) team has been monitoring current events and working with other organizations like RestoreTheDelta.org.

RestoreTheDelta reported on April 19th:

“April 1st was more than just April Fools’ Day; it was also the seating of the Delta Stewardship Council, which happened to coincide with the West Coast Salmon Summit hosted by Congressmen George Miller and Mike Thompson. RTD had called supporters out to attend the Salmon Summit, which contributed to a glaring absence of Delta supporters at the historic seating of the Stewardship Council. The absence of Delta support in the room was noted by one of the public commentators.

The first order of business was for the Council to elect their Chair. Not surprisingly, Phil Isenberg was unanimously elected Chair. No Vice Chair was elected.

Then the appointees were introduced. Sacramento Supervisor Don Notolli holds the only seat guaranteed to represent any Delta interest on the Council by virtue of the fact that he is the Chairman of the Delta Protection Commission. Besides Supervisor Notolli, we have Hank Nordoff, Patrick Johnston, Randy Fiorini, Phil Isenberg, Gloria Gray, and Richard Roos-Collins, who was absent.

Judge Ronald Robie officiated the swearing in of the Council. Judge Robie, a former head of DWR, reads and interprets water laws, some of which he wrote years ago.

Mr. Isenberg called Judge Robie “one of the best water judges in the state; he wrote the laws.” Resources Agency Director Lester Snow told the newly sworn in Council that one of their goals should be to keep the Council’s actions out of Judge Robie’s court because “he’s not a friend of ours.” It is hard to know whose friend Snow thinks Judge Robie is, but there was chuckling in the room by those thinking the BDCP and Alternative Conveyance are done deals. Time will tell. “

The STCDA were also dissappointed on April 10th to see email from the California Sportsfishing Protection Alliance (CSPA) that:

“Assemblymember Fuller has introduced AB 2336 to terminate the management and protection of the public’s striped bass fishery that inhabits the Bay-Delta estuary. The bill mandates the elimination of all regulations that govern the legal harvest of the fishery thereby eliminating its sport fishing protective status. The author alleges this is necessary to reduce striped bass predation on salmon and Delta smelt protected by the state and federal Endangered Species Acts.

This bill is similar to the one the Fuller introduced last year that was defeated by a coalition of anglers who care about the fishery and that acted in concert with sportfishing and environmental groups lead by CSPA. That bill was killed in its first committee hearing because the false arguments used by the author significantly overstated the impact of striped bass predation. Scientific testimony provided during the hearing made it clear that striped bass rarely, if ever, eat Delta smelt and that predation on listed salmon is so low that it does not impact the population level of the listed salmon.

This bill is different in that it calls for the elimination of “the program enhancement, expansion or improvement of the fishery”. Ironically, such programs do not exist! It also requires that the Delta Stewardship Council to establish programs to discourage the promotion of the Bay-Delta striped bass as a sport fishery. It further requires the Stewardship Council to evaluate predator suppression options and make recommendations to remedy these problems. “

As a friend of mine who grew up in Brentwood said “I used to do a lot of striper fishing in the Delta back when the salmon were plentiful. I always make a point to cut open the bellies of the fish I catch to see what they are eating. I have never found a salmon in the belly of a striper!”

Other noteworthy news: Mary Piepho and the other four Delta County supervisors are fighting to obtain funding because of the Delta Plan’s critical importance to the communities of the Delta. We need to support these efforts and speak out against the new bills to re-start the 2-Gates project and, definitely, against the Water Bond Bill in November!

KQED re-aired their “Saving the Bay” series in April. Interesting information:

In 1945 the Central Valley Project (CVP) (Shasta Dam and Friant Dam and huge pumping station, the Tracy Pumps was planned). The CVP had 4 goals:
1. Water supply
2. Hydro-electric
3. Recreation
4. Flood Control

Not until it (the CVP) was in place would its impact on ecosystems become evident. Notably the blocking of the salmon’s runs.

Today the survival of salmon is based on unceremonious procedures – fertilization no longer occurs in pristine rivers, instead, unceremoniously in a bucket.

Meanwhile the huge pumping stations in the Delta reverse the estuary’s natural flow of the Delta, often destroying a vast population of fish drawn into its own irresistible pull. The millions invested in 2 great engineering marvels [the Shasta Dam and Tracy Pumps] would, by century’s end, cost billions to deal the consequences.

We have committed the sin of serial engineering when it comes to the Estuary. For every engineering effort, for every engineering investment where we have tried to engineer a particular ecosystem service out of the Delta there has been a cascade of effects. Each one of those effects requiring a new investment of engineering. On that new investment of engineering against the need for more engineering. So we get locked into a cycle of serial engineer we can’t escape.

We know the “science” behind the 2-Gates project is flawed. We need to ensure that additional Delta projects are not implemented that affect the ecosystem.

Good News – Six months after the court-ordered release of water from a Central Valley dam, the San Joaquin River is now reconnected with San Francisco Bay, a major development in the river’s long-term recovery and re-establishment of chinook salmon populations.

Website Note: We’ve added a new tab, “Event Tracker” to help you and us keep track of the current issues and current legislative bills we need to focus on. It also includes a “History of Events” starting with when many of us first heard about the 2 Gates project and tracking activities and events since then for reference.

Central Valley Business Times Article:

Residents of the Discovery Bay area of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta were warned Monday night that powerful, unnamed, forces from Southern California are waiting to spring a massive peripheral canal on them.

Such a canal would be bigger than the Panama Canal and would send fresh water around the Delta to pumps that would transfer it to the San Joaquin Valley and Southern California.

Much of the Discovery Bay opposition keys in on what is dubbed the “Two Gates Project” that would construct dams in the Delta to divert the flow of water.

The project, which seemed to be on the fast track last fall, now seems stalled.

But leaders of the [Save the California Delta Alliance – formerly the] Save the San Francisco Bay and Delta Foundation say it’s merely a lull in a water war pitting Southern California interests against the landowners in the Delta.

“We’ve won some good battles, but we haven’t won the war yet,” says Mike Guzzardo, spokesman for the Save the San Francisco Bay and Delta Foundation. “It can change week by week. We just can’t let it go and assume we’ve won.”

Click here to see an interview with Mr. Guzzardo taped at Monday night’s SFBDF meeting in Discovery Bay.

BAY AND DELTA AREA RESIDENTS AND BUSINESS OWNERS SHOULD ATTEND THIS MEETING!

Our members will be presenting an update on where we are today on the “2 Gates” issue plus enhancing everyone’s understanding of the bigger water issues that will be affecting us for years to come.

There will be special guest speakers including:

• Mary N. Piepho – Contra Costa County Supervisor
• Susanna Schlendorf – District Director for Assemblymember Joan Buchanan
• David Nesmith – Environmental Water Caucus

This special program is designed to give an overview of:

• A Brief History of the Bay and Delta.
• An Update on the 2 Gates project.
• An overview of major Delta water projects.
• Who’s taking water from the Delta, where are they taking it from and why?
• What contaminants are in our water, where are they coming from and what can we do about it?
• How do we provide water to those who need it and what measures can we take to conserve water?
• Why are we growing low value crops instead of growing more drought resistant crops that yield more and use less water?
• Water conveyance and storage.
• Our efforts to maintain the beauty and health of the Southern Delta and Discovery Bay.
• A surprise announcement about SFBDF you won’t want to miss.

We hope you can make this event, please feel free to pass this email on to anyone you know who may be interested.

“Save the San Francisco Bay and Delta Foundation (SFBDF) is a public interest organization committed to working with local, state, and federal government
to create a balanced plan that offers water for everyone and also makes the California Delta and San Francisco Bay a safe and healthy environment for all who live here.”

Please read the email below for the latest from Supervisor Piepho who is keeping a watchful eye on those that would ruin our delta.

From: BOS District3 [mailto:Supervisor_Piepho@bos.cccounty.us]
Sent: Friday, February 26, 2010 4:28 PM
Subject: Feinstein’s water meddling

For Your Information
________________________________________
Courtesy of Supervisor Mary Nejedly Piepho, Contra Costa County, District III

Los Angeles Times Editorial
February 17, 2010

Feinstein’s water meddling

By attempting to divert water to a group of farmers in the west San Joaquin Valley, she risks upsetting a delicate compromise reached last year.

Cities, farmers, fishermen and environmentalists have been waging an exhausting tug of war over water for decades in California, but last fall something unusual happened. All those ropes being tugged by competing interests were woven into something new — a framework for settling conflicts approved under a package of bills by the Legislature. The agreement might have been a fragile web, but it was a historic one nonetheless. And then, last week, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) fired a cannonball through it.

Feinstein announced that she would attach a rider to an upcoming federal jobs bill that would boost water deliveries from the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta to a vocal agribusiness community in the west San Joaquin Valley. Because these farmers were late to the game of acquiring water rights, they’re the first to get shorted when deliveries are cut, as they were last year because of drought conditions and court- ordered pumping restrictions aimed at restoring fish populations. West valley farmers only got about 10% of their allocations of federally subsidized water in 2009, and Feinstein’s rider would ensure they get closer to 40% this year and next.

Feinstein says she’s proposing the amendment because “people in California’s breadbasket face complete economic ruin without help.” Indeed, unemployment is running alarmingly high in some Central Valley communities. But then, they’ve long been beset by chronic unemployment. Moreover, a report by the University of the Pacific suggests that the vast majority of the region’s job losses have been in the construction industry, not agriculture. And it’s perverse to insert language in a jobs bill aimed at benefiting farmworkers without considering the impact on fishermen, whose industry has been devastated by heavy pumping of delta water. The delta is home to hundreds of species, including the increasingly threatened chinook salmon.

That’s only the beginning of what’s wrong with Feinstein’s amendment. If approved, it would create a legal morass around conflicts between federal and state endangered species protections. Worse yet, it would blow apart the trust built up among competing stakeholders during years of negotiations preceding last year’s water package. Her attempt to make an end run around this bipartisan process, at the behest of a powerful interest group, could destroy what limited progress has been made and end in years of litigation and acrimony.

Though the west valley’s farms are important to the state’s economy, they are located in a naturally arid landscape that’s unsuited to agriculture; moreover, runoff from the area contains heavy selenium deposits, which turned a local reservoir into a toxic waste dump. If cuts in water deliveries make it expensive to farm in such unsustainable places — well, maybe that’s as it should be. The region should only get its water allotment if managers deem there is enough surplus to allow it.

Feinstein says she’s still working on the language of her rider and is open to alternative suggestions. Here’s ours: Stop interfering with the state’s delicate water talks and withdraw this destructive amendment.

XXX

Office of Supervisor Mary N. Piepho
Contra Costa County, District III
309 Diablo Road
Danville, California 94526
Ph: (925) 820-8683
Fax: (925) 820-6627

181 Sand Creek Road, Suite L
Brentwood, California 94513
Ph: (925) 240-7260
Fax: (925) 240-7261

email: dist3@bos.cccounty.us

SUPERVISORIAL STAFF:
Tomi Van de Brooke, Chief of Staff
Lea Castleberry, Deputy Chief of Staff
Marion Murphy, Scheduler/Office Operations
Karyn Cornell, East County Field Representative
Jennifer Quallick, South County Field Representative