Bay Delta Conservation Plan's Terminal Flaws Remain

In spite of minor changes, tunnel plan is still a water grab

by Dan Bacher

The California Department of Water Resources (DWR) officials today unveiled changes to Governor Jerry Brown's Bay Delta Conservation Plan (BDCP) to build the giant twin tunnels, including the elimination of the northern pumping plants at the proposed water intakes on the Sacramento River.

Delta advocates weren't impressed, responding that the "fatal" flaws of the water diversion project remain. These include taking water from the Sacramento River above the Delta, violating the Clean Water Act and hastening the extinction of Central Valley salmon and other species.

The cornerstone of the plan remains two massive tunnels, 40 feet in diameter, that would divert water from the Sacramento River and ship it over 30 miles away to the state and federal water project diversion canals near Tracy in the South Delta. The tunnel plan is opposed by a diverse coalition of fishing groups, Indian Tribes, family farmers, Delta residents, environmentalists and consumer advocates.

In a news release, the Brown administration and its federal partners claimed they had made "several significant changes" to the water conveyance portion of the proposed Bay Delta Conservation Plan, most notably the elimination of the need to build three pumping plants along the Sacramento near Hood.

"The changes were pursued over the past year in an effort to respond to the concerns of Delta landowners and others," according to DWR. "The changes, subject to further refinement, will be incorporated into the draft plan and Environmental Impact Report/Environmental Impact Statement that were available for formal public comment until July 29."

They said changes will be "recirculated" for additional public comment in 2015, but didn't indicate a specific date or month when this would occur.

The changes announced today would:

• Eliminate three pumping plants on the east bank of the Sacramento River between Hood and Walnut Grove.

• "Minimize activity" on Staten Island, which provides important sandhill crane habitat, by removing tunnel launch facilities, large reusable tunnel material storage areas, a barge landing site, and high-voltage power lines.

• Increase use of property owned by the California Department of Water Resources (DWR).

• Eliminate the need for additional permanent power lines to the intake locations in the north Delta, including near Stone Lakes National Wildlife Refuge.

• Eliminate impacts on Italian Slough (near Clifton Court Forebay) by removing an underground siphon.

• Reduce power requirements.

• Allow water to flow from the Sacramento River entirely by gravity at certain river stages.

• Reduce tunnel operation and maintenance costs.

"The changes would eliminate the need to build three separate two-story pumping plants along a five-mile stretch between Clarksburg and Courtland," DWR said. "The original plans to build three intakes screened for fish protection along that stretch of river would not change, but after extensive engineering analysis, DWR has determined that it is not necessary to also build pumping plants adjacent to each intake in order to move the water from the river and into tunnels."

Instead, water could be moved from the river into tunnels by a single new pumping plant constructed 40 miles away, at the end of the tunnels on DWR property near Clifton Court Forebay, according to DWR.

"The roughly 87-acre footprint of each intake would not change, but three 46,000-square-foot buildings would not be needed to house pumping plants. No permanent transmission lines, substations, and surge shafts would be needed, either. Facilities at the intakes would include fish screens in the river, sedimentation basins, drying lagoons, access roads, and control gate structures," DWR stated.

Fact sheets and visual simulations of the proposed changes to the northern intakes and Clifton Court Forebay are available at: http://baydeltaconservationplan.com.

Restore the Delta (RTD), opponents of Governor Brown's Bay Delta Conservation Plan to build the peripheral tunnels, said a "slight revision" of the proposed project removes none of the "fatal flaws," including removing water before it flows through the Delta and violating the Clean Water Act and degrading Delta families’ drinking water. The plan continues to threaten Central Valley Chinook salmon, steelhead, Delta and longfin smelt, green sturgeon and other imperiled fish species with extinction.

“You can dress it up, you can dress it down by making the project look less industrial," said Barbara Barrigan-Parrilla, RTD executive director. "But if you divert the Sacramento River from the Delta, it will kill the SF Bay-Delta estuary. It is still a water grab and slightly lessening the construction impacts means nothing.”

Tunnel opponents once again called upon Governor Brown to “abandon the doomed project” and instead embrace a "sustainable water solution that is fair to all Californians." That solution includes reducing Delta water exports, strengthening Delta levees, and investing in regional water independence through sustainable programs.

“These minor changes appear to save money for the water-takers on construction and possibly operation costs, but they still do not address local concerns," said Osha Meserve, counsel for Local Agencies of the North Delta (LAND). “It is a misnomer to call the new configuration ‘gravity flow’ as if it will operate on its own."

"The river flows by gravity," she noted. "This system will still require pumps, and a tremendous amount of energy to operate. They have lost even more ability to operate the experimental intakes in ‘real time’ to protect fish, with the pumps so far away."

Meserve also pointed out that:

• Local tunnel critics have never focused on the pumping plant structures on their own as being a major concern, in contrast to claims by DWR officials. "It is misleading to say this minor project change addresses local concerns," said Meserve.

• The so-called temporary electricity transmission lines (10 years) are still a major bird strike concern. All they have proposed to mitigate this impact is to install bird diverters, which have limited effectiveness, especially in foggy or nighttime conditions.

"There is also no direct monitoring of bird strikes being proposed," said Meserve. "They intend to just do a population survey of the Greater sandhill cranes every five years to see if the population has changed. If it has gone down, it is not even clear what the response would be to assist in the crane’s survival."

• Taking some tunnel impacts (tunnel launch sites and muck) off of Staten just places them in other islands to the north and south. These areas also contain important bird habitat and productive farmland.

“84% of the water in low-water years would still have to be taken from the existing below-Delta pumps – continuing the massive fish killing that has gone on for decades and threatens extinction of salmon, smelt and other species," emphasized Barrigan-Parrilla. “The BDCP still takes the fresh water that presently flows through the Delta from above the northern Delta boundary, causing harm to the farmers who currently draw water within the Delta."

"The fight over the BDCP tunnels and the future of the Delta is California’s fight over whether we will have a sustainable economy and environment, or if we will succumb to the top 1% of corporate water interests controlling rivers, streams, fisheries, water rates, family farming, local development, and spending from the general fund – all in all – access to the California dream," Barrigan-Parrilla concluded.

The tunnels opponents outlined a sustainable solution to our water challenges. “We need to face the fact that the State has over allocated up to 5 times more water than is normally available in the Delta watershed,” said Barrigan-Parrilla. “We need to invest in water recycling, conservation, stormwater capture, groundwater cleanup, and new water-saving technologies that provide local jobs and reduce reliance on the over pumped Delta.”

The Environmental Water Caucus (EWC), a coalition of fishing groups, environmental organizations and Indian Tribes, proposes an alternative that reduces water exports to a more sustainable level, in order to permit recovery of the Delta while maintaining water supplies for both Delta and south of Delta water users. The "Responsible Exports (RX) Plan" sets a cap on water exports of 3 million acre feet in all years. (http://www.restorethedelta.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/RESPONSIBLE-EXPORTS-PLAN-MAY-2013.pdf)

In contrast, the Bay Delta Conservation Plan is based on the absurd contention that diverting more water from the largest estuary on the West Coast of the Americas will "restore" it. In reality, the BDCP will hasten the extinction of Central Valley Chinook salmon, Delta and longfin smelt, green sturgeon and other fish species, as well as imperiling salmon and steelhead populations on the Trinity and Klamath rivers.

In an extreme case of corporate greenwashing, the Bay Delta Conservation Plan, under the guise of "habitat restoration," will take vast tracts of Delta farmland out of agricultural production in order to irrigate toxic, drainage-impaired land on the west side of the San Joaquin Valley owned by powerful corporate agribusiness interests.

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