If It Ain’t Broke, Don’t Fix ItBy: Stina Va The Delta Stewardship Council has discussed state levee investment strategy for the Delta for over five years. Yet local Delta and state agencies had communicated to the Council their support and confidence in the existing state levee investment strategy, which administers state funds for Delta levee improvements and maintenance. The agencies’ message has often been, if the system for maintaining and operating the levees ain’t broken, you don’t need to fix it. But the Council cynically continues to spend taxpayer money into developing a new levee investment strategy, without objectively studying or seeking to measure the benefits and protections that existing Delta levee improvements and maintenance already provide to the state [...]

Articles • If it ain’t broken… • History repeating itself… • Not Really Fixing It If it ain’t broken… By Stina Va Local and state Delta agencies continue to disagree about current state efforts to change priorities and funding for Delta levees. Currently, two efforts are under way: The Delta Stewardship Council is developing a “levee investment strategy” to implement its Delta Plan levee strategy, and the Delta Protection Commission is studying the feasibility of creating a Delta levee assessment district to fund levees that may not be covered by state or federal liability. The Council seeks to prioritize levees for investment, and the Commission hopes to create a funding base to ensure funds are available to invest. But local [...]

“This is the way the world ends; not with a bang or a whimper, but with zombies breaking down the back door.” ― Amanda Hocking, Hollowland Articles BDCP is NOT dead How MWD proposes to make this pencil out How the Water Bond plays into this Wringing more water out of the Delta Reducing flow for the SF Bay-Delta estuary through publicly funded water transfers BDCP is NOT dead On September 23, the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California (MWD) got an update on the Bay Delta Conservation Plan (BDCP) from Department of Water Resources Director Mark Cowin, Delta Stewardship Council Chairman Randy Fiorini, and MWD’s own Bay-Delta Committee. Cowin told MWD that DWR is making progress on three fronts: [...]

“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 [...]

“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 [...]