Article from Central Valley Business Times.
http://www.centralvalleybusinesstimes.com/stories/001/?ID=25585
STOCKTON
April 7, 2014 11:53am
- Impact worst on Byron, Discovery Bay
- “Air quality bad enough in Byron to require people to move in order to avoid an increased cancer risk”
(Note: Click on the link at the end of the text story to listen to a news conference at which these and other allegations were made.)
Thousands of residents of Byron and possibly Discovery Bay and other communities might be forced from their homes because of health threats from construction to massive twin water tunnels, environmental groups charge Monday.
The tunnels, which might cost as much as $67 billion to build and finance, are being pushed by Gov. Jerry Brown to siphon off water from the Sacramento River before it could flow into the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. Instead, the fresh water would be shipped to the State Water Project and federal Central Valley Project to be sold to agricultural users in the San Joaquin Valley and to urban users in Southern California and Silicon Valley.
“The Brown Administration admits the tunnels would have ’52 significant and unavoidable adverse impacts’ on the Delta region, including permanently degraded groundwater quality, long-term reduction of navigation opportunities, and exposure to unhealthy air quality bad enough in Byron to require people to move in order to avoid an increased cancer risk,” says Restore the Delta Executive Director Barbara Barrigan-Parrilla. “Hidden deep in the 40,000 page project proposal, and further buried in a footnote … is the news that Byron area children, elderly and people with conditions like asthma will be so threatened by air toxins from the tunnels project that they would have to leave town. What about the thousands of people just up the road in Brentwood and Discovery Bay?”
Bill Jennings, executive director of the California Sportfishing Protection Alliance says, “California is in a water crisis because the state has over promised, wasted and inequitably distributed scarce water resources.”
He says overpumping to serve “Westlands and Kern County mega-growers” has resulted in the collapse of a salmon fishery that feed families and a billion dollar fishing industry.
Ms. Barrigan-Parrilla also criticizes federal legislation proposed by Sen. Dianne Feinstein to rollback pumping restrictions. “Sen. Feinstein is recklessly pushing more pumping for unsustainable mega-growers, while ignoring the heightened risk from continued dry years.This is exactly how we got into the current situation, when exporters continued to pump during the past dry years. The senator’s claim that fisheries aren’t threatened by increased pumping belies the facts.”
Drilldown