Another matter worth mentioning at the July 17 BDCP meeting is the current violation of West Delta salinity standards by the state and federal governments.
We’re in the second year of a dry period, not even a drought, and DWR and the Bureau of Reclamation have already asked the State Water Resources Control Board to change this year’s classification from dry to critical because they expect to violate Delta outflow and salinity standards at Jersey Point, Terminous, and San Andreas in the near future. (This is like a speeder saying “I plan to drive too fast along this stretch of freeway, so let’s just make things easier for us all and raise the speed limit.”)
And the Water Board, as we have seen, never met a water quality or outflow standard that it wasn’t willing to NOT enforce, given enough pressure from exporters. No plan for adaptively managing the Peripheral Tunnels is going to give the Water Board a backbone for protecting the Delta.