Governor to unveil tunnels-only Bay Delta "Conservation" Plan

Governor Brown to unveil tunnels-only Bay Delta "Conservation" Plan

by Dan Bacher

Governor Jerry Brown will join federal and state officials today in Oakland to discuss "Delta habitat restoration and water infrastructure," according to a media advisory from the Governor's Office.

The event to discuss the revised Bay Delta Conservation Plan to build the twin tunnels, open only to "credentialed media," will take place on Thursday, April 30, 2015 at approx. 11:00 a.m., at the Elihu M. Harris Building, Auditorium, 1515 Clay Street Oakland, CA 94612. As usual, the public, which overwhelmingly opposes the tunnels, is not invited.

The Governor's Office, in an apparent attempt to keep the public or opponents from knowing where and when Brown would announce his latest tunnels-only plan to destroy the Delta and SF Bay-Delta estuary, did not release the media advisory until 6:06 pm Wednesday.

However, one California official, California Department of Fish and Wildlife Director Chuck Bonham, did reveal to the Associated Press Wednesday that they have dramatically scaled back the "habitat restoration" planned during construction of two giant tunnels under the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta to export northern California water to corporate agribusiness, Southern California water agencies and oil companies conducting fracking and steam injection operations.

Bonham told the Associated Press that the project now calls for restoring 30,000 acres for wetland and wildlife habitat - down from the 100,000 acres originally proposed.(http://www.newson6.com/story/28935885/ap-newsbreak-california-cuts-habitat-fix-for-delta-project)

Bonham said the amount of land targeted for environmental "restoration" was revised because there was "too much complexity" in the original 50-year plan, given the need to get permits from federal wildlife agencies against a backdrop of "uncertain future climate change impacts."

"We need to restore habitat in the Delta," Bonham told the Associated Press. "We've known that for a long time. There's no dispute there. Let's get going and do it."

Restore the Delta (RTD), opponents of Governor Brown’s rush to build massive underground water tunnels that would "drain the Delta and doom sustainable farms, salmon and other Pacific fisheries," announced a news conference at noon, April 30, outside the State Building, 1515 Clay Street, to respond to the governor’s abandonment of habitat restoration in BDCP tunnels. For more information, go to: http://www.restorethedelta.org.

“You cannot have successful habitat or restore fisheries while draining the Delta of its water,” said Barbara Barrigan-Parrilla, RTD executive director. “The governor has now abandoned that as a co-equal goal of building the tunnels. BDCP is now a naked ‘tunnels-only’ water grab for the unsustainable mega-farms in Westlands and Kern.”

Barrigan-Parrilla and Bob Wright of Friends of the River will speak and answer questions at the news conference.

Background: Earlier this month, Governor Jerry Brown finally admitted what most Californians have known all along - the "conservation" and "habitat restoration" components of the Bay Delta Conservation Plan have been nothing but window dressing for the twin tunnels water grab, potentially the most environmentally destructive public works project in California history.

On April 13, RTD and the Center for Biological Diversity responded to the governor's abandonment of the pretense of "conservation" and "restoration" and move to permit a "tunnels only" Bay Delta Conservation Plan.

"The new plan is a giant step backward," said Chelsea Tu, a staff attorney with the Center for Biological Diversity. "If it goes through, this massive project's boosters will be able to build these tunnels without having to do anything to protect our wildlife and waters — and will neatly sidestep input from the public."

The recent abandonment of the pretense of "restoration" and "conservation" under the BCCP is part of a larger pattern by the Brown administration, a regime that has pushed some of the most anti-fish and anti-environmental policies of any administration in California history. This is a huge story that the mainstream media and much of the alternative media have failed to cover. (http://www.truth-out.org/speakout/item/30452-the-extinction-governor-rips-the-green-mask-off-his-tunnels-plan)

Meanwhile, the mainstream media continues to portray Brown as a "climate leader" and "green energy" guru when in fact he is a strong proponent of neoliberal carbon trading policies and the expansion of the environmentally devastating practice of fracking in California. (http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/30/us/california-governor-orders-new-target-for-emissions-cuts.html?_r=0)