Delta Flows - Weekly Highlights from Restore the Delta
For the Week of February 12, 2007
Last week, Restore the Delta was busy observing how the release of the report by Public Policy Institute of California, Envisioning Futures for the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, has raised important questions and concerns about the current and evolving Delta crisis. Restore the Delta agrees with the authors that business as usual will lead to a complete environmental and economic disaster for the region and the state.
At the same time, we have been somewhat amazed at the media’s coverage of the report. As one Restore the Delta supporter noted after his initial reading, “…the peripheral canal is only one part of one of the solutions and it is not clear that this is the best solution.” Perhaps, because the term peripheral canal shows up 91 times in the document, reporters have latched onto the peripheral canal as being the one and only solution?
With that observation, you will find below a press release sent out by Restore the Delta a short time ago. It clearly states why we believe that a peripheral canal is not in the best interests of restoring and sustaining the California Delta. We hope that it will help to broaden the debate. Please feel free to share it with others.
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Restore the Delta Contact: Barbara Barrigan-Parrilla
PO Box 691088 Phone: 209-479-2053
Stockton, CA 95269 Email: Barbara@Restorethedelta.org
www.restorethedelta.orgRESTORE THE DELTA OPPOSES PERIPHERAL CANAL:
Delta-based grassroots group launches campaign to stop ‘water-grab’
Stockton, California -- Restore the Delta is announcing its formal opposition to the development and construction of a peripheral canal as the answer for sustaining and restoring the California Delta.
Articles in newspapers throughout the state regarding the recent report by the Public Policy Institute of California, Envisioning Futures for the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, and the selection of members for the Governor’s Blue Ribbon Panel as part of the Delta Vision Plan, indicate a willingness in the policy community and media to assume that the peripheral canal is the first and best answer in order to reverse the decline of the California Delta.
However, as Restore the Delta President and Delta area resident Bill Loyko notes, “There is a thirty-year history of state and federal water agencies failing to fulfill promises regarding the management of water exports. To date, not one water agency has answered our question: ‘How much fresh water flow is needed to pass through the Delta via current flows in order for the Delta to remain healthy?’ Why should we trust these regulatory agencies now, especially when current peripheral canal legislation seeks to set water exports at 2006 levels that caused Delta fisheries to crash? The fact that such a proposal is being advanced suggests a water-grab is in progress.”
Moreover, Restore the Delta Board Member David Nesmith notes that the answer to sustaining and restoring the Delta is in a reduced demand for water. “Over the last twenty years, urban per capita water use has decreased by 50%, and we can continue to substantially reduce the amount of water pumped out of the Delta by maximizing conservation, wastewater reclamation and reuse, and by capturing storm water where it falls.”
In order to get the word out about alternatives to the peripheral canal, Campaign Director Barbara Barrigan-Parrilla has begun making presentations throughout the community. Ms. Barrigan-Parrilla seeks to bring local Delta area residents together to create Delta sustainability and restoration plans that do not include the building of a peripheral canal.
Ms. Barrigan-Parrilla explains, “While advocates of a peripheral canal are insisting that the Delta must be made more saline during certain times of the year, they do not address the need for freshwater flows in the spring and summer from the Sacramento and San Joaquin Rivers, which are necessary for a healthy Delta community. Prior to exporting water through the state and federal water projects, a balance in salinity and fresh water provided the necessary water quality to maintain healthy fisheries and to sustain thriving Delta farms. An increase in upstream water diversions and excessive water exports have undone that balance.”
As noted in testimony by the South Delta Farming Community at the recent State Water Resources Board Salinity Workshop, since state and federal water projects have begun exporting water, increases in salinity have had a negative impact on water quality for Delta farming. Multiple generations of family farmers in the South Delta did not struggle with irrigating their crops as they are doing now due to the salinity problem.
Restore the Delta board members are also concerned that the public is not aware of the link between the Delta Vision Process and the formulation of the Bay Delta Conservation Plan that is currently being crafted by water contractors from the southern part of the state, the Resources Agency, the Department of Water Resources, and environmental groups approved by the Resources Agency - none of which represent local Delta stakeholders.
As Ms. Barrigan-Parrilla notes, “A public process, the Delta Vision Plan, is being informed by the Bay Delta Conservation Plan. But through the Bay Delta Conservation Plan, water contractors are hoping to gain multiple decades of assurances regarding water export amounts for a token of money to restore local fisheries. Plus, the contractors and special water districts at the table don’t want to discuss the 900,000 acres of land in the western side of the San Joaquin Valley and other portions of the state that never should have been irrigated. These lands have naturally occurring selenium which leaches out in the drain water and poisons wildlife refuges and groundwater.”
Restore the Delta maintains that all of this land should be purchased by the state and/or federal government and retired from irrigation. Then the two million acre feet of water now used for irrigating can be left in the Delta to help support local fisheries and agriculture.
Restore the Delta also insists that all future Delta
planning processes should include local Delta stakeholders.
According to Ms. Barrigan-Parrilla, “There is a problem when
policy institutes create reports without the input of Delta
experts who live, farm and work within the Delta. There is a
problem when government planning processes include water
contractors without equal numbers of Delta area advocates. And
there is a problem when nobody is questioning why outside
interests are shaping the future of the California Delta
through a conservation plan that does not include local Delta
stakeholders. We can’t help but wonder if the groundwork is
being laid for another infamous California water-grab?”
