STOCKTON – Today, Restore the Delta called for the abolition of the Delta Stewardship Council (DSC) in a powerful comment letter directed at the Council’s recently released Draft Program Environmental Impact Report (DPEIR) on the Delta Plan Amendments that would greenlight the Delta tunnels and other new storage projects around the state.
In the letter, Restore the Delta disclosed that 65 of 75 impacts listed in the report were significant and unavoidable according to the DSC, which justified such harmful impacts as reflective of the DSC’s inability to control what other state and federal water agencies do.
Policy Analyst for Restore the Delta, Tim Stroshane writes,
“The DSC is a bureaucratic redundancy lacking meaningful authority to benefit either the people of the Delta or of the state of California. The DSC should be abolished and its useful functions, such as the Delta Independent Science Board, relocated to another more appropriate state agency.
“Furthermore, we find that in the Draft Plan EIR for the amendments that:
• “The Council’s proposed Delta Plan amendments are planning activities, yet they take no account of State of California environmental justice, human right to water, and anti-discrimination policy requirements.
• “The proposed Delta Plan amendments fail to set measurable standards for reducing reliance on the Delta and for making conservation a way of life in California.
• “The proposed Delta Plan amendments fail to address in a meaningful way the significant and unavoidable impacts resulting from construction and operation of new conveyance. Instead, the DSC so to speak passes the administrative buck back to other state agencies.”
To read Restore the Delta’s comment letter, click here.
BACKGROUND:
For years, Restore the Delta, environmental groups, and Delta residents have requested the Delta Stewardship Council to follow Delta Reform Act mandates to reduce reliance on the Delta, invest in existing levees, protect fish, and stop the damage from operation of the state and federal water pumps near Tracy. Instead, the DSC chose to promote ”dual conveyance” systems in order to aid the Brown Administration and special interest water districts attempting to push through the Delta Tunnels proposal in the last year of Governor Brown’s term.
For immediate release: January 22, 2018
Contact:
Barbara Barrigan-Parrilla, Restore the Delta, 209-479-2053, [email protected]
Tim Stroshane, Restore the Delta, 510-847-7556, [email protected]
First of all I want to say thank you I would like to add I believe that soj51net has a place in this movement of doing what’s right for the people of Northern California Southern Oregon as well as the United States as a whole we are under assault by our government atrocities are being committed against citizens of the United States every single day by our federal government we need to restore our rights to the Constitution as well as protect our lands through the Constitution. As we the people are supposed to have access to public lands but yet BLM continues to put up more gates all over the United States and block are access I did not give them permission to do these things and we are the people we are the government yes I find these things offencive and I believe that we the people can make a difference but we have to stand up and hold the government accountable and responsible for their bad behavior.