[env-trinity] Greenspace 3 1 2011

[Byron Leydecker]

 <http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/greenspace/> Greenspace

Environmental news from California and beyond


 
<http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/greenspace/2011/03/brown-administration-pus
hing-ahead-with-sacramento-san-joaquin-delta-plans-.html> Brown
administration pushing ahead with Sacramento-San Joaquin delta plans  


March 3, 2011 |  4:22 pm 

 
<http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/.a/6a00d8341c630a53ef014e867937d5970d-pi>
Boat

The future of a multibillion-dollar project to reroute water shipments from
Northern California and salvage the battered ecosytem of the Sacramento-San
Joaquin delta started looking shaky late last year.

Irked that the project may not give them all the water they want, major San
Joaquin Valley irrigation districts said they were walking away from the
planning process. 

But in prepared remarks, a state water official made it clear Thursday that
as far as the administration of Gov. Jerry Brown is concerned, the program
is alive and vital to the millions of Californians who draw water from the
delta.

Jerry Meral, the Brown administration's point man in the delta wars,
canceled his appearance at a Los Angeles water policy conference because
illness. His speech was delivered -- with a few wry asides -- by Randy
Kanouse, a Bay Area water official who is a friend of Meral's but also a
vocal critic of the delta project.

Meral did not endorse specifics of the plans, the latest version of which
calls for extensive habitat restoration and construction of a huge tunnel
system to carry Sacramento River water beneath the delta to southbound
aqueducts.

But he emphasized that the current system of pumping from the south delta
causes "great harm to the biology of the delta, while delivering relatively
poor quality water under the constant threat of water supply interruptions,
from court imposed sanctions to failing levees." 

Meral, an environmentalist who handled water issues during Brown's first
administration, said the expense of new facilities should be borne by the
agencies supplied by the delta. "By absorbing the full cost of new water
facilities, water users will receive price signals about the true cost of
water, and will manage it accordingly," he said.

Meral insisted that delta management should be guided by science "unfiltered
by political considerations."

And he acknowledged complaints that various organizations have been excluded
from key decisions, suggesting the formation of working groups open to a
broad array of interests that would hammer out contentious aspects of the
delta proposal.

"More public involvement is necessary," Meral said. "In fact, it is critical
for the results to be accepted by all."

 

 

Byron Leydecker, JcT

Chair, Friends of Trinity River

PO Box 2327

Mill Valley, CA 94942-2327

415 383 4810 land

415 519 4810 mobile

 <mailto:bwl3 at comcast.net> bwl3 at comcast.net

 <mailto:bleydecker at stanfordalumni.org> bleydecker at stanfordalumni.org
(secondary)

 <http://fotr.org/> http://www.fotr.org 

 

 

 

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://www2.dcn.org/pipermail/env-trinity/attachments/20110304/4e977413/attachment.html>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: image001.jpg
Type: image/jpeg
Size: 35981 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://www2.dcn.org/pipermail/env-trinity/attachments/20110304/4e977413/attachment.jpg>