The Franks Tract Futures Project is asking for additional comments on the State’s revised concept design.¹ The project is an outgrowth of the State’s 2016 Delta Smelt Resilience Strategy, which recognized that Franks Tract is a death trap for state and federally listed Delta smelt.

The original design for the project included tide gates to keep salt and smelt from moving upstream from the western Delta into Franks Tract via the False River channel. Once in Franks Tract, the smelt would most assuredly not survive. A new design “transforms the project from an early focus on establishing habitat for the endangered Delta smelt to a project that has sought input from a broad range of stakeholders.” According to the project leader, Brett Milligan from University of California:

Balancing the project’s goals has been a challenge. The first round of this project, the feasibility study, met the water quality and ecology requirements but did not meet the recreational and local economy (requirements). We heard you loud and clear. More or less, this entire last year has been to try to bring in that third tier and to balance these and see if there’s a way that the project can meet all of these criteria and be beneficial to all. The original project design failed to earn public support after it was presented in January 2018. At a crossroads, the project managers made a critical decision. They scrapped the proposal and formed an advisory committee of stakeholders with varied interests in Franks Tract rather than try to force the initiative through the process, while fighting the public every step of the way.

The new design drops the barrier/gate option as “a non-starter,” Brett explained to me. But that was the essential element of the project – stopping salt (and smelt) intrusion into the interior Delta due to the pull of the south Delta export pumps. A temporary barrier has been installed in False River in drought years to protect Delta water supplies.

The conflict is over recreational access to Franks Tract from the west via False River. A similar barrier on Montezuma Slough further west in Suisun Marsh resolved a similar conflict with a boat passage lock that maintains boating access when the barrier is in use.

At this phase of design and permitting, it would seem wise to evaluate an alternative with the barrier that includes a similar boat passage facility, so that the affected public can understand the tradeoffs. That is the purpose of the environmental review process.