“First they ignore you. Then they laugh at you. Then they fight you. And then you win.” ― Ghandi Articles • Halftime Score. Delta 7. Tunnel Proponents 0. • Getting Ready for the Second Half. • Game plan Halftime Score. Delta 7. Tunnel Proponents 0. The Bay Delta Conservation Plan is dead. Long live the Delta! That puts the people who love the Delta and who want to see REAL restoration of the estuary in the lead at halftime. When we consider that the Brown Administration and tunnel proponents threw at us 40,000 pages of convoluted and misleading documents, a quarter of a billion dollar administrative effort, and eight years of public messaging and lobbying by the deep pockets at [...]

Fishermen, Delta Leaders: Exporters “Destroy Delta Smelt” Export Projects Overpumping Delta During Drought Destroys Fisheries If Endangered Species Become Extinct, Fault Will Be With State Water Board and Captive Fish Agencies Stockton, CA – Restore the Delta (RTD) and other opponents of Gov. Brown’s rush to build massive underground Tunnels that would drain the Delta of freshwater and doom sustainable farms, and salmon and other Pacific fisheries, today responded to the finding that Delta Smelt may be extinct. The latest state trawl survey found just six smelt to date. The smelt may be reaching the point of no return if swift action is not taken. The tunnels opponents criticized a move by the State Water Board to further weaken Delta [...]

For Immediate Release: Thursday, March 12, 20145 Contact: Steve Hopcraft 916/457-5546; [email protected]; Twitter: @shopcraft; Barbara Barrigan-Parrilla 209/479-2053 [email protected]; Twitter: @RestoretheDelta; Bob Wright, FOR, 916/442-3155 x207; [email protected] Brown Administration Hides Truth About Tunnels From Public, Tunnels Opponents Post Suppressed Public Comments: Includes EPA, Army Corps of Engineers & State Water Resources Control Board; MWD Funds Misguided $600,000 Attack on Delta Water Rights, Would Ruin Sustainable Family Farms NOTE: Technical difficulty between 22:02 to 23:52 Sacramento, CA- Friends of the River (FOR), Restore the Delta (RTD) and other opponents of Gov. Brown’s rush to build Peripheral Tunnels that would drain the Delta of freshwater and doom sustainable farms, and salmon and other Pacific fisheries, today announced posting on the Friends of the [...]

“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 [...]

We will now discuss in a little more detail the Struggle for Existence. – Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species Articles Hunger and thirst Speaking of BDCP …. 2014 State of Our Rivers Symposium Hunger and thirst By Jane Wagner-Tyack UOP economist Dr. Jeffrey Michael reports in an April 7 blog post that between 2007 and 2012, despite the drought in 2009, San Joaquin Valley agriculture made a clear shift toward permanent crops. Over that period, acreage of field crops (like cotton, hay, grain, and alfalfa) increased by 2 percent. Acreage of fruit and nut crops (like almonds, pistachios and grapes, crops that can’t be fallowed in a dry year) increased by 21 percent. Meanwhile, acreage of vegetable crops decreased [...]

On Tuesday, March 4, we released a new map depicting the overlap between the largest agricultural users of Bay-Delta water exports, land impaired by selenium concentrations that make farming unsustainable, and oil and gas basins that could be fracked. “This map will show a remarkable overlay of where our water is going, how the public subsidizes unsustainable crops on drainage-impaired lands, selenium concentrations that pose a threat to the public, and underlying oil deposits that could be fracked with water from the governor’s tunnels,” said Barbara Barrigan-Parrilla, executive director of RTD. “Unsustainable farming has damaged these lands. And the taxpayers have been subsidizing it. Fracking is another water intensive industry in the San Joaquin Valley that will further contaminate groundwater [...]

FOR  IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Tuesday, January 30, 2014Contact: Steve Hopcraft 916/457-5546; [email protected]; Twitter: @shopcraft; @MrSandHillCrane; Barbara Barrigan-Parrilla 209/479-2053 [email protected]; Twitter: @RestoretheDeltaIn case you missed it…The Bakersfield CalifornianTuesday, Jan 28 2014 10:00 PMLOIS HENRY: While D.C. plays politics, real water issues awaitBy Lois HenryThere are real issues to be discussed involving California’s water troubles. Tough issues.Such as, whether we’ve overplanted with crops that simply cannot be accommodated long term given regulatory changes in the Sacramento-San Joaquin delta.Oh yeah, I went there. Let the howling begin.Can our water system sustain the explosion in almonds, pistachios, grapes and other permanent crops we’ve seen in Kern and other valley counties?I don’t know.But I do know that’s a question being mulled, even among those in the [...]

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Monday, January 27, 2014 Contact: Steve Hopcraft 916/457-5546; [email protected]; Twitter: @shopcraft; @MrSandHillCrane; Barbara Barrigan-Parrilla 209/479-2053 [email protected]; Twitter: @RestoretheDelta In case you missed it… The Sacramento Bee Viewpoints: Better solutions for managing California’s water By Barbara Barrigan-Parrilla Special to The Bee Published: Sunday, Jan. 26, 2014 – 12:00 am During the current drought, the public will hear a lot about water management in California. Unfortunately, Californians are being presented with a false dichotomy – that California’s water problems are about fish vs. people. It’s what large corporate agribusinesses from the Westlands Water District and Kern County Water Agency have been pushing on the public since 2009. While we agree with these opposing groups that we have a water [...]

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Wednesday, January 22, 2014 Contact: Steve Hopcraft 916/457-5546; [email protected]; Twitter: @shopcraft; @MrSandHillCrane; Barbara Barrigan-Parrilla 209/479-2053 [email protected]; Twitter: @RestoretheDelta Tunnels critics blast Congressional move to suspend Endangered Species Act to favor Westlands, Kern mega-growers during drought The move to push forward legislation by Congressman Devin Nunes, Congressman Kevin McCarthy, and Congressman David Valadao, with the support of House Speaker John Boehner, to allow the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta pumps to operate “as long as water is available” in a drought is nothing more than a blatant, short-sighted water grab, fueled by years of political contributions from huge growers in the Westlands Water District and the Kern County Water Agency to these Central Valley Congressional Representatives. Furthermore, we find it [...]