The Delta Stewardship Council isn’t rubber-stamping BDCP’s environmental documents. Council staff note, for example, that:
- the chapters need opening summaries and readable comparisons of the environmental impacts of alternatives.
- all alternatives should be analyzed at similar levels of detail. (Right now, only the Peripheral Tunnels alternative is analyzed in detail.)
- the EIR/EIS should at least explain how the Water Board’s 2010 flow criteria have been used, as the 2009 Delta Reform Act required, to inform planning decisions, even though those flow criteria didn’t include beneficial uses. The Stewardship Council suggests that the environmental documents can’t just sidestep the question of balancing outflows, exports, and other beneficial uses.