Delta Plan = Bay Delta Conservation Plan

Delta Plan = Bay Delta Conservation Plan

by Dan Bacher

On May 14, Delta Stewardship Council (DSC) staff announced the release of the final and sixth draft of the Delta Plan, a document that Delta advocates slammed for recommending the building of new "conveyance" - a peripheral canal or tunnel.

Executive Officer Joe Grindstaff said the staff plan includes 14 enforceable policies and 68 recommendations, ranging from water conservation requirements to addressing the problem of "invasive species" in the Delta. "The plan also specifically calls for prompt completion of the Bay Delta Conservation Plan, which is to be incorporated into the final Delta Plan," he said.

While Grindstaff said the plan does not take an "official position on the specifics of a new water conveyance system," he did say the Council does believe in the "importance of new conveyance -a peripheral canal or tunnel for the health of the Delta."

"My sense is the council believes strongly that conveyance and storage are really important for the Delta," Grindstaff said. "If we keep doing what we're doing, we're going to fail."

Delta advocates blasted the staff plan for being a "rubber stamp" for the Bay Delta Conservation Plan to build a peripheral canal or tunnel to export more Delta water to corporate agribusiness interests on the west side of the San Joaquin Valley and southern California water agencies

The plan "recommends - SURPRISE! - new conveyance as the way to improve water quality in the Delta," responded Barbara Barrigan-Parrilla, Executive Director of Restore the Delta, to the plan's publication. "This rubber stamp for the BDCP is not what legislators had in mind when they created the DSC."

Barrigan-Parrilla emphasized, "Without a water quality analysis that examines how eliminating fresh water flows from entering the Delta will affect water quality, this draft of the Delta Plan is as incomplete as the last draft. The Delta Stewardship Council must build its plan on a cost benefit analysis, a public trust analysis, a water quality analysis, and a flow analysis, and until it does so, its planning will remain incomplete."

The DSC is meeting next Thursday, May 24, at the Ramada Inn & Suites, 1250 Halyard Drive, West Sacramento, and Restore the Delta is encouraging supporters to show up and comment. The meeting is from 9 a.m. to 5:30, but there is a closed session in the morning, and it looks like the DSC may not get around to considering the 6th draft until noon.

"Bear in mind, though, that Chair Isenberg doesn't necessarily break for lunch at any predictable time," Barrigan-Parrilla stated.

Also on Thursday the 24th, at 5:30 p.m., the Delta Protection Commission (DPC) is meeting and will consider the 6th draft of the Delta Plan. That meeting will be held at the Antioch Historical Society, 1500 West Fourth Street, Antioch. "If you can't make it to West Sacramento during the day, you might want to attend the DPC meeting in the evening," she urged.

Delta advocates oppose the BDCP because it is designed to export more water to irrigate drainage-impaired land on the San Joaquin Valley's west side and would result in the removal of large tracts of Delta farmland, some of the most fertile on the planet, out of agricultural production under the guise of habitat restoration. The removal of more Delta flows through a canal or tunnel would hasten the extinction of Sacramento River winter chinook salmon, Delta smelt, longfin smelt and other fish species, according to agency and independent scientists.

For more information, go to: http://www.restorethedelta.org.