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 [...]

You know you’re getting your message through when one of Gov. Brown’s pro-tunnels front groups launches untruthful attacks on you. One of the legions of flacks being paid to push Gov. Brown’s Delta-destroying tunnels has attacked Restore the Delta in a typically truth-twisting screed. It’s difficult to believe the guy who bought Enron stock while advising Gov. Davis on energy policy. The same guy who bought fracking company stock while advising Speaker Perez has little credibility on the Delta. Who’s paying for these attacks on Restore the Delta? We do take it personally when false attacks are launched on us. So we thought we’d take a few minutes to respond, and then we’ll go back to fighting the stupid tunnels. [...]

Fishermen, Delta Leaders Protest Move to “Destroy Salmon” Push by Westlands, Feinstein to Overpump Delta will Destroy Fisheries; If Endangered Species are Extinct, No Need for Protections; Governor is Violating Clean Water Act Listen to audio: Sacramento, CA – Delta fishermen and community leaders held a news conference this afternoon outside a State Water Resources Control Board (SWRCB) meeting and announced they have filed protests against the State Water Resources Control Board for its January 27, 2015 Notice of Temporary Change Petitions (TUCP) because it will weaken Delta outflow and water quality standards to the point of extinction for Delta smelt and winter-run Chinook salmon this year. Barbara Barrigan-Parrilla, Executive Director of Restore the Delta, said, “The State Water Resources [...]

“We can follow the example of those who remembered that the role of an activist is not to navigate systems of oppressive power with as much integrity as possible, but rather to confront and take down those systems.” — Derrick Jensen Articles • Navigate or Confront • How drought management plays out in the Delta • Chipping away at all watershed protections Navigate or Confront By: Barbara Barrigan-Parrilla This week, Tim Stroshane finished preparing Restore the Delta’s first Protest response to the State Water Resources Control Board, specifically the Board’s January 27, 2015 Notice of Temporary Urgency Change Petition (TUCP). The TUCP is the Board’s decision to modify D-1641 for the months of February and March, weakening Delta outflow standards, [...]

Restore the Delta Responds to Westlands Water District Secret Settlement; Trawl Survey Shows Delta Smelt Population At All Time Low           Taxpayers Should Not Have to Shoulder Westlands’ Water District’s Debt Or Give Up More Water While System Is At Risk Sacramento, CA – Restore the Delta (RTD), opponents of Gov. Brown’s rush to build Peripheral Tunnels that would drain the Delta and doom sustainable farms, salmon and other Pacific fisheries, today responded to the prospect of a secret settlement of the debt Westlands Water District owes to US taxpayers and the near extinction presently of Delta smelt. Statement by Restore the Delta Executive Director Barbara Barrigan-Parrilla:            “The idea that the Westlands Water [...]

Diseases desperate grown By desperate appliance are relieved, Or not at all. – Shakespeare, Hamlet Articles Full-court press from Westlands Roll up your sleeves for recirculated BDCP documents Full-court press from Westlands by Jane Wagner-Tyack Westlands Water District irrigators are face to face with the ugly truth of how little water their junior water rights give them when there isn’t any surplus, and how much they have to pay for what they can get. In July, the Department of Water Resources (DWR) and the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation (USBR) (uninfluenced by exporters, of course) asked the State Water Resources Control Board to order south and central Delta water diverters with riparian and pre-1914 water rights to provide information about what [...]

“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 [...]

“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 [...]