BDCP called a “triple platinum lie”

http://www.centralvalleybusinesstimes.com/stories/001/?ID=24772

by Gene Beley, Delta Correspondent

• Opponents to governor’s plan lay out their arguments
• “We are the people who care deeply about the things that have been here forever”
• VIDEO added

That happened Monday when Restore the Delta used a rally and press conference on the steps of the state Capitol building to launch its “Californians for a Fair Water Policy” campaign to stop the BDCP twin tunnel project.

(Watch video of the event here:)

Restore the Delta Rally and Press Conference, California State Capitol, Sacramento, Dec. 9, 2013 from Gene Beley on Vimeo.

“It’s a triple platinum lie,” said Zeke Grader, Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Association. He and other speakers from the world of state politics and environmentalists were noting the delivery of the BDCP’s 34,000 pages of documents posted on the Internet in the form of the draft plan and its environmental reports.

This brings the BDCP one step closer to meeting requirements to proceed with the tunnels, but many speakers tried to assure the small gathering that they would be citing many laws that make the tunnel project illegal.

Restore the Delta has a second rally scheduled for Friday the 13th at the Capitol’s steps at 11:30 a.m. The 120-day public comment period also begins Friday, leaving many to wonder which side is more superstitious.

Mr. Grader said the BDCP is a lie first because it will not save the Central Valley salmon, “despite what they claim.” He added it would destroy the iconic run and the fisheries off the California coast.

“They are going with untested screens,” Mr. Grader continued. “They will put at risk all our Sacramento River salmon, which contribute so much to our offshore fisheries in California and Oregon. It will also undercut our efforts to restore the San Joaquin (River).

“The second lie is that it will save the Bay and Delta estuary. It will do nothing to conserve that,” he said.

Mr. Grader said the project and its massive twin water tunnels — each 40 feet in diameter and 35 miles in length — could even endanger the biggest nursery grounds for dunes crabs along the Pacific Coast in San Francisco Bay as well as the herring fishery. “So it’s not just the salmon,” Mr. Grader emphasized.

“The third platinum lie is somehow this is going to provide us a reliable water supply,” Mr. Grader continued. “Perhaps the authors of the BDCP documents are not in total denial of our climate change, but they certainly don’t understand how it’s going to work. The fact is, if we’re going to supply California with a reliable water supply, we’ve got to begin looking beyond the Delta so local areas can supply their own water and reasonable, less costly alternatives such as conservation and, if you can, desalinization.”

Bob Wright, senior counsel for Friends of the River, said the federal government has been ignoring laws and deceiving the public with misinformation. “The water tunnels would take huge quantities of fresh water away from the Sacramento River and the Delta,” he said, adding that it would endanger the threatened fish species, including winter and spring run Chinook salmon, “driving them into extinction.”

“This is against the law!” Mr. Wright exclaimed. He then read the law verbatim and added there is an intentional cover-up going on.

“The reason the federal agencies are flagrantly violating the Endangered Species Act is, if the scientists are allowed to do their work honestly, their bosses know that the assessments and opinion will establish that the water tunnels are not a lawful, permissible project under the Endangered Species Act,” he said “Extinction is forever.”

Kathy Miller, a member of Stockton City Council and chairman for the Delta Coalition, said the twin tunnel project would erode Stockton’s tax base when “some of our most productive land is taken out of production both during construction and afterwards for the habitat creation.” She added that the habitat restoration would not offset the environmental destruction that is sure to come to the Delta.

Ms. Miller said the BDCP project would also endanger Stockton’s recently opened Delta water intake plant and the city’s wastewater treatment plant. “Both would be seriously compromised by degraded water quality and quantity,” Ms. Miller said. “These projects represent huge investments of tax dollars of our residents that willingly invested in good faith for our water quality and supply needs.” Ms. Miller said no one area should be sacrificed for the benefit of another area in the state.

Jim Cox, president of the California Striped Bass Association and a retired sport fishing charter captain, told about his fears that the Suisun Marsh area will be harmed even more than he’s seen it go downhill already the past 40 years. He said that area is like a nursery for many species that spawn in fresh water, and then spend part of their lives in salt water. Mr. Cox said the Suisun Marshes have become more salt water than even brackish water today. He said the only hope to save that area is to cut back on fresh water exports from the Delta to the state and federal water distribution systems south of the Delta.

“The BDCP project is one of six plans submitted to the state,” Mr. Cox said. “This is the one that relies the most on exporting water out of the Delta.

“We are getting short changed in California,” he concluded. “We have some of the best problem solvers in the world in the Silicon Valley and California universities, but a plan outdated 50 years ago is not a plan for the future. We can do better.”

Jonas Minton, an advisor to the Planning and Conservation League, called the BDCP project “a $50 billion scheme to saddle taxpayers and water users throughout California with debts that will go on for decades.”

“These special interests have resisted every single attempt to have a vote by the people, or to obligate themselves or even the Legislature. They know if a vote of the people were held, it would fail. They are trying to push this through special interests. It is the definition of taxation without representation,” he said.

Osha Meserve with the Local Agencies for the North Delta (L.A.N.D.) estimates that the thousands of pages of public documents posted on the Internet would be nine feet tall if anyone were to print them out.

“When you hear this is a conservation plan, I want you to look carefully at the actual document,” Ms. Meserve said. “You will notice that the federal fish and wildlife agencies did not make a determination as to whether this plan would be beneficial for some key species. You will see they make determinations in the document for all the other species except Sandhill cranes, longfin smelt, winter-spring-fall Chinook salmon, white sturgeon, and green sturgeon. In all those columns, you will see no determination. I appreciate the Federal agencies at least having the nerve to put “no determination” there. What they really meant to put was “adverse” and they couldn’t do that.”

Assemblyman Jim Frazier, D-Fairfield, said the BDCP project is “riddled with inconsistencies.”

“The current plan continues a funding structure that assumes a significant contribution from both the state and federal sources,” Mr. Frazier said. “That I believe is not only uncertain, but unrealistic. This uncertainty puts a risk both on water rate payers, who may see increased water bill prices, and taxpayers, who may have to find themselves on the hook to bail out a plan that contains no funding guarantees.”

Stockton’s Bill Jennings, executive director for the California Sportfishing Protection Alliance, said that since 1967, the Delta fisheries have collapsed: “Populations of Delta smelt are down 98.9 percent, striped bass 99.6 percent, longfin smelt 99.7 percent, American shad 89.1 percent, threadfin shad 98.1 percent, and splittail down 99.4 percent.” Mr. Jennings said the BDCP proposal to divert more water around an estuary already hemorrhaging from lack of flow is “a death sentence for the estuary.”

Mr. Jennings told the shivering audience that Central Valley water was fully appropriated before 1914 and legal claims now exceed water that’s actually available by five-fold. He said the big water districts behind the twin tunnels are the most junior claimants and the projects are left with what’s known as paper water — kind of like creating artificial money from a credit card.

Caleen Sisk, spiritual leader and chief of the Winnemem Wintu Tribe, said they deserve a place at the table to help plan any such project this enormous. She asked the crowd if they know what it’s like to feel an estuary dying?

“We sent our salmon to New Zealand in 1910,” she began. “Now New Zealand is one of the biggest producers of Chinook salmon in the world. Their biggest buyer is Japan. But California is now down to just recreational fishing and low rates of commercial fishing. We have the ability to be the highest producing salmon state in the world. We should be like it was before agricultural business farming and the water allotments.

“We are the singers of water,” Chief Sisk said. “We sing to the water and do dances for the salmon. We are the people who care deeply about the things that have been here forever.”