“In the discovery of secret things and in the investigation of hidden causes, stronger reasons are obtained from sure experiments and demonstrated arguments than from probably conjectures and the opinions of philosophical speculators of the common sort.” – William Gilbert Articles EPA re BDCP: The short version Worrisome language in the Water Bond “At the table” about habitat Revisiting the Delta Plan’s House of Mirrors EPA re BDCP: The short version People who follow Delta issues know by now that the California Natural Resource Agency will be recirculating the BDCP Draft and environmental documents early next year. This may be largely in response to a letter they received from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency giving a long list of problems [...]
adaptive management
News from Restore the Delta: June 5, 2014
“In one of our conversations yesterday, we were talking about adaptive management and how everyone seems to be using the term differently, and the most cynical interpretation of a lot of the use of ‘adaptive management’ is promising to fix it later.” — Dr. Jay Lund, Delta Independent Science Board “If you can’t dazzle them with brilliance, then baffle them with bullshit.” — W. C. Fields Articles An Implementing Agreement at last Lost in translation A Water Bond soup with too many cooks Hits, runs, and an error Ask for a dome No barriers after all (updated correction 6/6/14) Every great campaign has an art movement An Implementing Agreement at last We finally have a draft Implementing Agreement (IA) released [...]
News from Restore the Delta: 5/19/14
“Everybody in Vanity Fair must have remarked how well those live who are comfortably and thoroughly in debt; how they deny themselves nothing . . . .” — William Makepeace Thackeray Calling the water shots Behind the scenes planning by the water contractors who want the twin tunnels is bearing fruit with the formation of two new Offices in the Department of Water Resources (DWR). One of them, a new Bay Delta Conservation Plan (BDCP) Office in the Executive Division of DWR, will be responsible for that third of the plan that is actually supposed to help the ecosystem – Conservation Measures 2-22. It will be headed initially by Chief Deputy Director Laura King Moon, known to us for her [...]
News from Restore the Delta: 4/30/14
Conceal a flaw, and the world will imagine the worst. — Marcus Valerius Martialis Articles IFFI equals Iffy A sample letter on the subject of Funding IFFI equals Iffy You can remember the major inadequacies of BDCP if you think of Eye-Eff-Eff-Eye — IFFI. That stands for Impacts, Funding, Fish and Implementation. Let’s look at these individually. IMPACTS All the benefits of BDCP go to people outside the Delta, and all the negative impacts are borne by people in the Delta region. There are over 50 negative impacts that can’t be mitigated, and BDCP doesn’t even have to try to mitigate them if planners decide that mitigating them isn’t feasible. Basically, it isn’t feasible if they don’t want to do [...]
