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Undersecretary Hayes now knows there is no unanimity about a peripheral canal and BDCP

 

by Bill Jennings, CSPA Executive Director

August 13, 2009 -- Department of Water Resource (DWR) Director Lester Snow's well-orchestrated dog & pony show for Deputy Interior Secretary David Hayes at the California Water Issues Forum went according to script until the public comment period.  Initially, the agencies were only going to accept written questions.  However, Dick Poole and Bill Jennings protested and Lester agreed to allow those in the audience to speak following the presentations. 

Unfortunately, none of the newspaper accounts of the meeting mentioned the standing room only crowd or the fact that all of the speakers ripped the Bay Delta Conservation Plan (BDCP) process in general and the peripheral canal in particular.   Hayes did clearly state that the Obama Administration had a commitment to protecting the Delta as resource of nation significance and that efforts to weaken the Endangered Species Act were shortsighted and would not solve the water crisis.

Lester Snow and David Hayes plus administrators from the Natural Resources Agency, Bureau of Reclamation (Bureau), Department of Fish and Game (DFG), U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service (USFWS), National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) along with the Vice-Chair of the State Water Resources Control Board all made predictable and opening comments.  Representatives from DWR, Bureau, USFWS, DFG and NMFS described the drought, climate change, current water conditions and the state of the fisheries.  Dr. Doom (Jeff Mount) gave his predictable Delta catastrophe sermon.  Phil Isenberg described the Delta Vision process followed by a presentation from the Resources Agency and DWR on BDCP and the EIR/EIS.

The Delta Issues Panel was also predictable except for two supervisors from Sacramento and Yolo counties (on behalf of the five Delta counties) who complained being excluded from the BDCP process.  Tom Birmingham of Westland's Water District and Roger Patterson of Metropolitan Water District talked about the urgent need for a peripheral canal.  Gary Bobker of the Bay Institute and Kim Delfino of Defenders of Wildlife, who are participating within and supportive of the BDCP process, related some of their concerns about the developing habitat conservation plan.

Then Brother Snow's carefully laid plans went astray.  Dozens of speakers, from the fishing, environmental and Delta farming communities ripped the peripheral canal, the BDCP and their exclusion from the process.  CSPA's Bill Jennings' remarks are below.  Of note, were excellent remarks from Jane Wagner-Tyke of Restore the Delta, Jonas Minton of Planning and Conservation League, Zeke Grader of PCFFF, Dick Poole of Water4Fish, Kathrine and Joe Gray from the Bay Area, Barbara Vlamis and Barbara Hennigan from the Sacramento Valley and professional bass fisherman Bobby Barrack, among many others who spoke against the project.  No one spoke in favor of BDCP and a peripheral canal.

Lester Snow and Resource Secretary Chrisman were visibly discomforted by the parade of opposition and the appearance of an active grass-roots opposition to the grand scheme.  David Hayes clearly now knows that there is no unanimity about a peripheral canal and BDCP.  It's unfortunate that the media ignored the standing room only crowd of opponents and their comments. 

However, David Hayes' remarks about the Delta being a resource of national importance, the pledge of active federal involvement and funding, acknowledgment that affected communities must be involved and his observation that relaxing protection for endangered species would not solve the state's water woes was welcome news and received good press.         

CSPA Comments at the California Water Issues Forum

 

12 August 2009

Bill Jennings, California Sportfishing Protection Alliance

"As an outsider who is not a “stakeholder,” but someone who has spent the last 25 years in the trenches of the water quality and water rights processes - who has appeared before the waterboards over a thousand days - I have a few rhetorical questions.

How can we have a co-equal goal of water supply reliability when the state has issued rights for far more water than actually exists?  Isn't it past time for us to bite the same bullet Colorado did in the 70s and adjudicate?

If we're really concerned about the state's economy and the more than 20 million people in the Southcoast and San Clara Valley, shouldn't we eliminate the Monterey Agreement and reestablish the urban preference and requirements that water contracts be based on firm yields?

How can we believe that promises, assurances or even laws will protect the estuary when state and federal agencies have grievously failed to enforce and comply with them in the past?

 
(I note that DWR and the Bureau are violating D-1641 as we speak and that virtually all of the Bay-Delta standards have been violated this year including Delta outflow, San Joaquin River flows, south Delta water quality standards and the prohibition against using the Joint Point of Diversion while salinity standards are exceeded)

How do you protect the estuary's water quality by diverting dilution flows?  Divert the good water around the Delta and you increase the concentration and impacts of pollutants in the Delta.

What is the true cost of constructing seismic no-fail levees compared to the cost of a peripheral canal?

How do you marry the most complicated HCP and the largest hydrologic modification of an estuary in history, disconnect them from tributary waters and ram it through in record time?   And, how do you begin CEQA/NEPA review of that process without a project description?

Isn't 30 years enough time for Westside farmers to stop discharging prodigious quantities of selenium and other pollutants into the San Joaquin River?  And how do we restore the San Joaquin when 98.5% of its water molecules (or its fish) never reach Chipps Island?

Why should we trust the same individuals and agencies that caused and acquiesced in the crisis to now solve it?   Especially, when they continue to exclude the victims - the fishing and farming communities of the Delta - from the process.

And a final comment.

We have constitutional provisions, a water code, state and federal endangered species act, water quality acts, environmental review acts and a Fish and Game Code that - while imperfect - are sufficient to equitably distribute available water and protect pelagic and salmonid fisheries.  They would have prevented the present crisis and they're sufficient to fix it.

However, BDCP, in its present form, is simply another torturous effort to delay and evade compliance with those laws."