Dear Friends,
Sometime between the middle and the end of July, Governor Brown will announce a plan to proceed with building tunnel conveyance under the Delta – the current version of the Peripheral Canal that voters defeated with a referendum in 1982.
We are asking our supporters to write a letter to the Governor urging him not to proceed with this announcement until planners have completed the following analyses: cost-benefit, water quality, water availability, and a balancing of the public trust.
Please find below a sample letter that you can personalize. This is the development we have all been hoping could be avoided. It can’t. We need all our supporters to send letters as soon as possible.
Thank you!
Restore the Delta Staff
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Governor Jerry Brown
c/o State Capitol, Suite 1173
Sacramento, CA 95814
Dear Governor Brown:
A great deal of speculation is now focused on your proposed announcement of a plan to build tunnel conveyance under the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta – the current equivalent of the Peripheral Canal that voters defeated by referendum during your previous term as Governor. Issues that made the Peripheral Canal a bad idea 1982 have not been resolved.
This project should not proceed unsupported by the four following pillars:
- A thorough cost-benefit analysis that looks at the full social economic benefits of the uses of Delta water (not just a financial analysis of how the project might be paid for);
- A water quality analysis looking not just at export uses but what would happen to water quality with completion and operation of new conveyance;
- A water availability analysis considering historic over-allocations of the watershed known for the last seventy years, and supply variations that might be expected with climate change;
- A balancing of public trust uses of water.
These much needed analyses are not being adequately pursued by either the Bay Delta Conservation Plan (BDCP) or the Delta Plan being prepared by the Delta Stewardship Council.
I urge you to resist pressure to proceed with an announcement of any construction plan until these issues have been addressed.
Sincerely yours,
Signed Name