Article from Central Valley Business Times.
http://www.centralvalleybusinesstimes.com/stories/001/?ID=26058
STOCKTON
June 11, 2014 9:00pm
A coalition of 28 environmental groups and Native American tribes says the 40,000-page draft environmental impact report and statement for the Bay Delta Conservation Plan has “multiple failures to conform to state and federal laws,” among a litany of faults.
The Environmental Water Caucus lays out the problems in a 250-page critique, being filed as part of the public comments on the EIR/EIS.
“Even after seven years of planning and debate, BDCP fails to spell out who will be responsible for the $50 to $60 billion cost,” the EWC says. “Taxpayers can expect to pick up most of that tab.”
The state has stuck to an estimate of $25 billion, but that is not believed to include paying interest on the money borrowed to build the project. An estimate by an independent economist has put the potential cost north of $60 billion.
“There is tremendous uncertainty about the incremental cost of the Twin Tunnels project given risks associated with the future of Delta [water] export levels,” the critique says. “The pressure to undertake such a risky investment – and make it pay off – will be intense.”
With costs uncertain in the draft EIR/EIS, says the critique, water and species protection policies for the Delta Estuary would become secondary to the need to pay off Wall Street’s investors who would have bought the construction bonds.
The critique also says the Bay Delta Conservation Plan has little to do with conservation. “In an effort to mislead the public, BDCP disingenuously characterizes the eight-lane expressway sized tunnels that will drain the Delta of life sustaining freshwater as a ‘Conservation Measure,’” the critique says.
At the heart of the BDCP are twin water tunnels, each 40 feet in diameter, that would suck fresh water out of the Sacramento River before it could flow into the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta and instead ship it to buyers in the San Joaquin Valley, Southern California and Silicon Valley via the State Water Project and the federal Central Valley Project.
“Purporting to restore Delta ecosystems and protect its most vulnerable fish species, BDCP would instead further reduce natural Delta flows to San Francisco Bay, helping push listed, vulnerable salmon and resident fish species into oblivion, and officiate at the demise of California’s salmon industry,” the EWC says.
“The plan is an omelet of distortion and half-truth intended to mislead and deceive,” says Bill Jennings of the California Sportfishing Protection Alliance.
In the mid 1980s, when Jerry Brown was in his first iteration as governor, he pushed for digging a peripheral canal around the Delta. Voters rejected his scheme. The tunnels, which he supports as firmly as his bullet train idea, would accomplish the same goal with one exception: They will not come before voters.
The Environmental Water Caucus says it 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.