| Friends, It is wrong for the Central Valley Regional Water Quality Control Board to allow 25 years of poisonous selenium discharge into the Delta. Here’s how you can help. Join us at December 5, 2019 at 10 am (note the new time) at the Central Valley Regional Water Quality Control Board to take action! If you cannot attend, you can send a note to @Ashley.Peters@waterboards.ca.gov. In your note, or prepared comments to make at the Central Valley Water Board, you should explain why you object to selenium laden drainage water being discharged in Delta waterways for people, fisheries, and/or wildlife. You should explain why the San Luis Delta-Mendota Water Authority (which includes Westlands and the Grasslands Water District) should not be allowed to continue to irrigate on polluted lands with taxpayer subsidized water and then belch their pollution back into the Bay-Delta. WHEN: December 5, 2019 — 10 am WHERE: Central Valley Regional Water Quality Control Board 11020 Sun Center Drive, #200 — Rancho Cordova, CA Here’s the info you need on selenium discharge! Click here to read a Restore the Delta and coalition letter on the problems with selenium discharge for our local communities. It explains the problems with selenium accumulating in fish tissue, soil, and water supplies. Attend on December 5th, and be ready to comment (3 minutes; 300 words max) on why pollution from agricultural discharge into the San Joaquin River must end. Also, don’t be fooled that several nature preserves are looking for this discharge permit. Protecting open spaces by discharging seriously polluted water into urban communities is not environmentalism. It is not justice. And it contradicts the Newsom Administration’s stated goals around water justice. We cannot solve water pollution in one community by sending tainted water downstream. Delta communities are not the water dumping ground for upstream pollution. Also, think about this discharge permit in context of what is being implemented for new Delta management. This is the context for opposing this permit:More exported water is being taken from the Delta for State and Federal Water Contractors via state and federal water pumping rollbacks.A permanent water contractor is planned for major water polluter Westlands Water District — despite climate change impacts on water supply and their junior water right.Implementation of the decades-overdue Bay-Delta Water Quality Plan has not happened to introduce more needed flows into the San Joaquin River side of the estuary.Voluntary Agreements will be put forward soon to roll back the approved water flow increases for the San Joaquin River into the Delta. See #3.A notice for a proposed 6000 CFS tunnel will be released soon — with operations being planned with weaker water quality and fishery standards than proposed during WaterFix. See #1.And now the plan is to also okay a 25-year permit to discharge selenium into the Delta and San Francisco Bay, allowing more pollution to accumulate in Delta area soils, fish tissue, and eventually water systems. There is a bullseye on the back of Delta communities. The plan is for more water exports from the Delta, fewer unrestricted flows to flush the Delta, a tunnel to divert the best water, and a discharge permit to send the polluted industrial agricultural water back to Delta urban communities in San Joaquin and Contra Costa Counties. In other words, the master plan for Delta management seems to be to transform the Delta into a stagnant, polluted drainage site, without healthy freshwater flows, fisheries, or protected drinking water supplies for Delta communities. We have had enough! While all Delta communities will be hit hard, area environmental justice communities which fish for sustenance and live closer to the San Joaquin River will feel the impacts the hardest. This is why we need your help Thursday. Yours in Action, |
Barbara Barrigan-Parrilla