Brown turns peripheral canal into metaphor for budget ballot measure

Brown turns peripheral canal into metaphor for budget ballot measure

by Dan Bacher

Governor Jerry Brown, a long time proponent for the peripheral canal/tunnel, this week compared a proposed ballot measure relating to the state budget to the peripheral canal.

"Make it bigger and you get support from those down stream, but increase the opposition at the same time - and vice versa," according to Brown.

"The genius is in determining the size of the pipe," he said.

However, Barbara Barrigan-Parrilla, campaign director for Restore the Delta, wasn't impressed by the metaphor nor those "geniuses" advocating for the canal/tunnel that Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger campaigned so relentlessly for.

"So far, we aren't too confident in the geniuses advocating for the pipe," quipped Barrigan-Parrilla.

"A Delta solution with a conveyance system as large as previously described in the Bay Delta Conservation Plan (BDCP) process will destroy Delta fisheries, working fishing families and working Delta family farms," emphasized Barrigan-Parrilla. "Regional self-sufficiency is the answer - not building a conveyance system that is subject to seismic threat, or spending too much money on energy moving water from one part of the state to the other, and destroying all that exists in between."

One of the "geniuses" advocating for the peripheral canal/tunnel is Gerald Meral, a controversial figure who appears to have an obsession with building this government boondoggle, regardless of the cost to the state's environment or economy.

Unfortunately, Governor Jerry Brown appointed Meral as the Deputy Secretary of the California Natural Resources Agency in charge of the Bay Delta Conservation Planning and Funding program in January.

Meral, a scientist who has a PHD in zoology, was a strong supporter of the canal to deliver more water to southern California and corporate agribusiness when he was deputy director of the state Department of Water Resources from 1975 to 1983. He has also served in leadership positions in some environmental NGOs, adding a green facade to the campaign to build the canal.

"I don't want to prejudge this," Meral recently told Mike Taugher of the Contra Costa Times, "but something like a facility roughly of the size in the earlier documents will be proposed, will be permitted and be built."

Meral isn't the only scientist who supports the peripheral canal. U.C. Davis scientists, in a 2008 Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC) report funded by Stephen D. Bechtel Jr. and the David and Lucille Packard Foundation, also recommended building a canal to achieve the "co-equal goals" of providing water supply and ecosystem restoration. Canal supporters got the best "science" that big corporate money can buy, and have used the badly-flawed report ever since to buttress the campaign to build the peripheral canal.

Fortunately, most Californians aren't fooled by the "scientific" and "environmental" veneer that some choose to bestow upon plans to build peripheral canal/tunnel around or through the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, the largest and most significant estuary on the West Coast of the Americas.

The story of the "world's smartest man"

During his testimony in a Legislative hearing on the Marine Life Protection Act (MLPA) Initiative in Eureka on January 21, Yurok Tribal elder Walt Lara told a great story about four people on an airplane.

"One was a Doctor, the second was a Scientist, the third was a Boy Scout and the fourth was an Indian," said Lara. "When the plane started to go down, they discovered there were only three parachutes."

Lara continued, "The Doctor said he had saved many lives, and would continue to save many people, so he had to live. The Doctor grabbed a parachute and jumped out of the plane. The Scientist said he had made a lot of important discoveries and he was the smartest guy in the world, so he grabbed the second parachute and jumped."

"The Indian told the Boy Scout, 'Look, I've lived a long life, and you have your whole life ahead of you. You take the last parachute.'"

"The Boy Scout said, 'No need for that. The smartest guy in the world just jumped out of the plane with my backpack.'"

Although story was directed at the absurdity of the MLPA Initiative, a process corrupted by numerous conflicts of interests and violations of state, federal and international laws that has completely excluded tribal scientists from its so-called "Science Advisory Team," it could have just as well applied to the peripheral canal and other similiar fiascos.

Real 'geniuses' don't support the canal

Like Barbara Barrigan-Parrilla and Walt Lara, I'm not very confident of the so-called "geniuses," who like the arrogant scientist in the plane who insisted that he was the "smartest person in the world," try to impose their will on other people by promoting projects that have no basis in natural science, but only in political science.

The canal/tunnel would cost $23 billion to $53.8 billion, according to a 2009 study by economist Steve Kasower, at a time when California is in its worst ever budget crisis. Critics of the canal, including fishermen, Tribal members, environmentalists, Delta residents and family farmers, fear that the construction of the canal/tunnel will lead to the extinction of Central Valley steelhead, Sacramento River chinook salmon, Delta smelt, longfin smelt, green sturgeon and the southern resident population of killer whales by taking more water out of the imperiled estuary.

Unlike what Jerry Brown contends, the real genius is not found in the "size of the pipe," but is displayed when one completely abandons the insane plan to build a peripheral canal!

For more information about the campaign to stop the canal and restore the delta, go to: http://www.restorethedelta.org.