Delta Flows – Weekly Highlights from Restore the Delta

Delta Flows – Weekly Highlights from Restore the Delta
 
For the Week of January 22, 2007:
 
Salinity Workshop; Senator Simitian’s Peripheral Canal Bill – The Death Blow to the California Delta
 
Salinity Workshop with the State Water Resources Board
 
Thank you to all who responded to our last action alert with emails. We are in process of putting a packet together for the Sate Water Resources Board with your comments regarding the salinity standard for the California Delta.
 
What did the two days of public workshops result in?  A public demonstration of how the Department of Water Resources, the Bureau of Reclamation, and the State Water Resources Board are rationalizing a weakening of the salinity standard – a level that was set to protect area agriculture and wildlife habitat – rather than determining the causes of of increased salinity in the South Delta and moving to eradicate those causes.
 
As explained in a presentation by Counsel and Manager of the South Delta Water Agency John Herrick, “It appears from prior hearings, meetings, and workshops that other interests will assert that a less protective standard is desirable.”  Those other interests include water districts and water contractors from the southern part of the state who believe that water quality for their needs trumps the water quality needs of local Delta stakeholders.
 
What is perhaps even more unsettling is that through proper management of water release flows, possible recirculation of water,  and the use of fish-friendly, low lift pumps, the 0.7/1.0 EC can be met throughout the South Delta at all times except during extreme drought.  As Delta farmer Alex Hildebrand explained, “…the standards can be met by a flexible combination of measures that do not require substantial new releases of stored water.”
 
Moreover, Bill Jennings of the California Sportfishing Protection Alliance made it clear that the State Water Resources Board “cannot meaningfully resolve South Delta salinity issues until it addresses the importation of millions and millions of tons of salt into the San Joaquin basin via the Delta-Mendota Canal.”
 
The process by which the salinity standard will be reviewed promises to be long, complicated, and difficult – the type of bureaucratic entanglement that can at times cause the most concerned citizen’s eyes to glaze over from the complexity of the details.  Restore the Delta will make every effort to demystify the process and to share with you the most salient points.  For those who want to learn more about the salinity workshops, please visit http://www.waterrights.ca.gov/baydelta/southerndeltasalinity.htm and feel free to engage with us in the dialogue. 
 
Senator Simitian’s Peripheral Canal Bill – the Death Blow to the California Delta
 
In the days ahead, watch for letter writing opportunities from Restore the Delta.  We need to make it clear to our area representatives that Senator Simitian’s SB27, a peripheral canal bill, would finish off the California Delta as we know it.  In his proposed legislation, water would be diverted directly from the Sacramento River through pumps to contractors and municipal users in Southern California without passing through and refreshing the Delta first.  These fresh water flows, set at 2006 water export levels, would be diverted from ever entering the California Delta, thereby permanently altering Delta water quality in ways that would finish off our fragile pelagic fisheries and that would also bring great harm to Delta area agriculture.
 
And if freshwater is diverted from the Delta for direct delivery to Southern California, Delta area needs such as an ongoing and sustained levee maintenance program, emergency preparedness for catastrophic events, protection of local agriculture, wildlife, and habitat, and planning for sea level rise all become secondary in importance.  Why?  Because water reliability will be secured for the more populated portions of the state at the expense of local Delta stakeholders. 
 
We cannot let the stage be set for the California Delta to become a written-off region after a catastrophic event.  The building and operation of a peripheral canal would create conditions that would allow the region to be forgotten, much in the same way that New Orleans is being forgotten.  Stay tuned for upcoming alerts from Restore the Delta on how you can help stop the peripheral canal and instead give voice to why and how the Delta can be sustained and restored.
 
 
Barbara Barrigan-Parrilla
Campaign Director
Restore the Delta
Making the Delta fishable, swimmable, drinkable, and farmable by 2010!
Barbara [at] restorethedelta.org
http://www.restorethedelta.org
ph: 209-479-2053
PO Box 691088
Stockton, CA 95269