Article from Daily Kos.
By Dan Bacher
Monday Jun 13, 2016 · 9:09 AM PDT
The State Water Resources Board on Friday, June 10, granted a 27-day extension of the deadline requested by multiple parties for objections to documents submitted by the state and federal governments to make their case for Governor Jerry Brown’s Delta Tunnels Plan, now called the “California WaterFix.”
The Water Board also relaxed some of the requirements for objections, noting that the extension is for the deadline only and not the start of the hearing, still scheduled to begin on July 26. You can read the ruling here: State Water Board Cal Water Fix Ruling, June 1
An array of fishing groups, conservation organizations, environmental justice groups, family farming organizations, local agencies and San Joaquin County submitted the deadline extension requests.
On June 1, 2016, AquAlliance, California Sportfishing Protection Alliance, Environmental Justice Coalition for Water, Environmental Water Caucus, Friends of the River, Planning and Conservation League, Restore the Delta, and Sierra Club California (AquAlliance et al.) submitted a letter requesting that the deadline to submit procedural or evidentiary objections concerning the petitioners’ “case-in-chief” be extended from June 15 to July 12, a 27-day extension.
“AquAlliance et al. contend that they need more time to review the large volume of exhibits submitted by petitioners, as well as modeling data that petitioners recently made available, and formulate any appropriate objections,” the Water Board explained.
Following AquAlliance et al.’s request, the County of San Joaquin, San Joaquin County Flood Control and Water Conservation District, and Mokelumne River Water and Power Authority also submitted a letter on June 2. In addition, Islands Inc. and Local Agencies of the North Delta, Bogle Vineyards, Diablo Vineyards and Brad Lange, Elliot-Stillwater Orchards, Delta Watershed Landowner Coalition, and Friends of Stone Lakes National Wildlife Refuge submitted letters requesting a 27-day extension on June 6, 2016.
On June 2, The Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Associations and the Institute for Fisheries Resources (PCFFA and IFR) submitted a letter requesting a two-month extension for all procedural modifications/clarifications following the Water Board’s April 25 Ruling.
The petitioners, the California Department of Water Resources (DWR) and the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, responded with a letter to the Water Board on June 3, opposing other parties’ requests to extend the deadlines for the hearing.
The petitioners state that time extensions are not needed because they submitted “concise testimony (133 pages for a total of 8 lead witnesses)” and a majority of submitted testimony and exhibits have been “publicly available” since February 2016, according to the Board.
The Water Board also received additional comments in opposition to the petitioners’ response from AquAlliance et al., PCFFA and IFR and Patrick Porgans of Planetary Solutionaries.
The Water Board agreed with the Delta Tunnels opponents that the extension was warranted — and disagreed with DWR and Reclamation’s claims that it was unwarranted.
“The parties’ request to extend the deadline to submit procedural or evidentiary objections by 27 days is warranted and is accordingly hereby granted,” according to the Water Board.
The Water Board also said, “In addition, this ruling hereby relaxes the requirement so that only objections that, if valid, would preclude petitioners’ witnesses from testifying must be submitted by the extended deadline.”
The above letters and other information regarding the hearing are available on the State Water Board’s WaterFix website at: www.waterboards.ca.gov/.…
The Department of Water Resources (DWR) and Bureau of Reclamation submitted their testimony and evidence as required for upcoming public Water Board hearings regarding their request to add three new points of diversion on the Sacramento River for the California WaterFix.
Restore the Delta, a coalition opposed to the project, described the testimony as “largely a rehash of unsubstantiated claims about the Delta Tunnels project that have not been proven, despite more than 40,000 pages of environmental review that the US Environmental Protection Agency has declared is still inadequate (a failing grade.)”
Background: California WaterFix will only hasten extinction of Delta smelt, salmon
Governor Jerry Brown is promoting his California WaterFix at a catastrophic time for salmon and Delta fish populations. In this spring’s California Department of Fish and Wildlife smelt survey released last week, the numbers of the endangered fish, once the most abundant fish in the estuary, have plummeted to a new low.
The 2016 Spring Kodiak Trawl (SKT) index, a relative measure of abundance, is only 1.8, a decrease from the 2015 index (13.8) and is the lowest index on record. (www.dailykos.com/…)
Only thirteen adult Delta Smelt were collected at 8 stations contributing to the index in 2016. “This is the lowest catch in SKT history, and a steep decline from the 2015 then-record-low catch of 88,” said Scott Wilson, Regional Manager of the CDFW Bay Delta Region in a memo.
”We are entering uncharted waters with the delta smelt now because populations have never been so low,” said Dr. Peter Moyle, UC Davis fishery scientist, professor and author. “My guess is that populations are so small now that random events, such as predation by a swarm of silversides on eggs and larvae in an isolated spawning event, can keep driving the population down.”
The Delta smelt collapse is part of an overall ecosystem decline driven by water diversions by the federal and state water projects. The CDFW’s 2015 Fall Midwater Trawl demonstrates that, since 1967, populations of striped bass, Delta smelt, longfin smelt, American shad, splittail and threadfin shad have declined by 99.7, 98.3, 99.9, 97.7, 98.5 and 93.7 percent, respectively, according to Bill Jennings, executive director of the California Sportfishing Protection Alliance (CSPA).
Jennings emphasized that “Mother Nature did not cause the estuary’s biological collapse,” in spite of claims by state and federal officials that the drought is the cause of the collapse.
“It is the result of illegal political decisions by state and federal regulatory agencies that have become captive to powerful special interests,” he stated.
Yet the Delta Tunnels plan will only hasten the extinction of Delta smelt, along with longfin smelt, winter-run Chinook salmon, Central Valley steelhead, green sturgeon and other fish species, according to Delta advocates and scientific experts. The California Water Fix will also imperil the salmon and steelhead populations on the Trinity and Klamath rivers.