| Co-equal goals doom plan to failure
by Dan Bacher
The Delta Stewardship Council (DSC) on February 14, Valentines Day, released the first draft of the Delta Plan and posted it onto the DSC website.
For those fighting against the construction of the peripheral canal and the export of more water from the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, the release of the document was anything but a "Valentine."
The document is the first of four drafts that will be developed and released over the next three months before the plan, part of a thinly veiled process to build a peripheral canal/tunnel around or through the Delta, goes under an environmental review in June.
Although the canal/tunnel was not mentioned specifically in the initial recommendations, the document is based on achieving the co-equal goals of water supply and ecosystem restoration. The objectives of achieving these goals include building a peripheral canal/tunnel - "improved conveyance" - as noted in the draft plan.
The plan "is designed to put the key issues on the table for the Council to discuss and receive input from stakeholders and the public," according to a statement from the DSC. "It's expected that three subsequent drafts will be released following the environmental review, according to a statement
"This is just the beginning of the process and it is expected the final Delta Plan will be considerably different," said Joe Grindstaff, Executive Officer of the Delta Stewardship Council. "The final Delta Plan will be released on Jan. 1, 2012 as directed by the Delta Reform Act of 2009. It will be a major step toward furthering the coequal goals that will be used in guiding actions impacting the Delta."
"'Coequal goals' means the two goals of providing a more reliable water supply for California and protecting, restoring, and enhancing the Delta ecosystem. The coequal goals shall be achieved in a manner that protects and enhances the unique cultural, recreational, natural resource, and agricultural values of the Delta as an evolving place," according to CA Water Code 85054.
The document has four preliminary staff draft findings, according to Grindstaff.
1. "California's total water supply is oversubscribed. California regularly uses more water annually than is provided by nature." This reality makes the management of our limited surface water supplies and the Delta even more critical. When water exports from the Delta are reduced, the unintended consequence is increased demand on an already overused and unsustainable groundwater system.
2. "California's water supply is increasingly volatile. Precipitation and runoff patterns are changing, increasing uncertainty for water supply and quality, flood management, and ecosystem functions." We must adapt our management practices in order to protect ourselves against present and future risk and if we are to achieve the coequal goals.
3. "Even with substantial ecosystem restoration efforts, some native species may not survive." Best available science indicates that some stressors are beyond our control and the system may have already changed so much that some species may never be able to recover.
4. "There is no comprehensive state or regional emergency response plan for the Delta." In spite of all the analysis that says that we have greater risk than New Orleans, all we have at the state and regional level are plans to develop plans.
"On the positive side, I do believe the Delta Plan finally offers California an opportunity to address some of the Delta's most vexing problems, specifically, achieving the co-equal goals," claimed Grindstaff.
While I agree with the draft plan's conclusions that California's water supply is oversubscribed and that there is no regional emergency plan for the Delta, I take strong issue with the co-equal goals that the document is based upon and the claim that some native species may not survive, in spite of restoration efforts.
First, these same co-equal goals are precisely the ones that doomed the CalFed process, a joint federal-state Delta "restoration" plan, to failure. The state and federal governments, by making the delivery of subsized water to corporate agribusiness and southern California water agencies on equal par with fish and ecological restoration, helped to engineer the unprecedented collapse of Central Valley chinook salmon, Delta smelt, longfin smelt, Sacramento splittail, young striped bass and other species by allowing record water exports from 2003 to 2006.
These increased exports, combined with declining water quality and poor ocean conditions, set in stage the unprecedented Sacramento River fall run chinook salmon collapse that resulted in the closure of commercial and recreational salmon seasons off the California and southern oregon Coast in 2008 and 2009 and in limited seasons in 2010.
The Bay Delta Conservation Plan (BDCP) and Delta Vision processes and the legislative water package, passed in a special session called by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger in November 2009, enshrined the co-equal goals just like the CalFed process did.
Amidst some pseudo-environmental language to give the plans to build the environmentally destructive and costly peripheral canal/tunnel a green veneer, the real goal of the legislation that created the Delta Stewardship Council is revealed in the legislation's language that is included in the Chapter 6 of the draft plan document.
In the "inherent objectives" to achieving the co-equal goals in Water Code Section 85020, section (f) states, "Improve the water conveyance system and expand statewide water storage."
"Improving the water conveyance system" is a euphemism for the peripheral canal, a project that was overwhelming voted down by the voters in November 1982. Recreational anglers, commercial fishermen, Indian Tribes, family farmers and Delta residents oppose the construction of the peripheral canal because they believe is will lead to the extinction of Central Valley salmon and Delta pelagic (open water) species and the degradation of Delta water quality.
Second, to say that "some native species may not survive," even with restoration efforts, appears to be a self-fulfilling prophecy. What the Council staff appears to be saying is that they're willing to sacrifice some endangered and threatened species to further the Delta's role as a water supply for subsidized corporate agribusiness on the west side of the San Joaquin Valley and southern California water privateers.Of course, if you build a canal to divert more northern California water, a number of species are bound to become extinct!
As Mark Franco, headman of the Winnemem Wintu (McCloud River) Tribe, said at a protest against the canal at the State Capitol in July 2009, "The peripheral canal is a big, stupid idea that doesn't make any sense from a tribal environmental perspective. Building a canal to save the Delta is like a doctor inserting an arterial bypass from your shoulder to your hand- it will cause your elbow to die just like taking water out of the Delta through a peripheral canal will cause the Delta to die."
"If the canal is built, it will turn the Delta into a cesspool and send the remnants of Delta fisheries to the scaffold," said Bill Jennings, executive director/chairman of the California Sportfishing Protection Alliance (CSPA).
I wish the Legislators and the Brown and Obama administrations would heed the words of Franco and Jennings, rather than only listen to the agribusiness executives, water agency officials and corporate environmental NGO leaders that are pushing for the construction of the canal/tunnel.
The Delta Stewardship Council process:
The issues encompassed on the first draft will be discussed in public Delta Stewardship Council meetings. During the Council meetings, specific components of the Delta Plan will be discussed and debated in a workshop environment. Overall the Delta Plan addresses: 1) key findings relating to the objectives set for the in the Delta Reform Act; 2) an overview of the kinds of strategies necessary to achieve those objectives.
Following the Council meetings and workshops revisions will be made and three subsequent drafts of the Delta Plan will be released in March, April and May. An administrative draft Delta Plan will be released in June as part of the formal environmental review process. Subsequent drafts will address: 1) performance measures and targets; 2) linkages and integrations of components; 3) phasing of various components; 4) cost sharing among all interests.
A copy of the first draft of the Delta Plan and a full release schedule of subsequent draft Delta Plans can be found on the DSC website at http://www.deltacouncil.ca.gov
About the Council
Created by the legislature in 2009, the Delta Stewardship Council is composed of members who represent different parts of the state and offer diverse expertise in fields such as agriculture, science, the environment, and public service. Of the seven, four are appointed by the Governor, one each by the Senate and Assembly, and the seventh is the Chair of the Delta Protection Commission. |
