[env-trinity] Article submission: Delta tunnel opponents ask Brown to release water bond language

[Dan Bacher]

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/08/07/1319814/-Delta-tunnel-opponents-ask-Brown-to-release-water-bond-language

Delta tunnel opponents ask Brown to release water bond language

by Dan Bacher

In an email sent to his campaign supporters on August 5, Governor  
Jerry Brown called for a “no frills, no pork”  $6 million bond that  
would be “tunnels neutral.”

Opponents of the Bay Delta Conservation Plan’s proposed $67 billlion  
tunnels quickly challenged the claim that the bond is” tunnels  
neutral” – and called for Brown to release the language of his water  
bond.

Brown explained the reasons for his pared down bond in his email, one  
of only three his campaign staff have sent out to supporters:

“Five years ago, state legislators and the Governor put a pork-laden  
water bond on the ballot — with a price tag beyond what’s reasonable  
or affordable. The cost to taxpayers would be enormous — $750 million  
a year for 30 years — and would come at the expense of funding for  
schools, health care and public safety. This is on top of the nearly  
$8 billion a year the state already spends on bond debt service.”

Since being elected governor, I’ve worked with the Legislature to  
reduce the state’s fiscal liabilities. Together, we’ve made steady  
progress paying down debt and enacting responsible, balanced budgets  
and it is no time to turn back now. Therefore, I’m proposing a no- 
frills, no-pork water bond that invests in the MOST CRITICAL PROJECTS  
without breaking the bank.

“My $6 billion plan provides for water use efficiency and recycling,  
effective groundwater management and added storage. It invests in safe  
drinking water, particularly in disadvantaged communities and for  
watershed restoration and increased flows in some of our most  
important rivers and streams.”

In June, the Brown administration circulated an outline for his bond,  
the "Water Action Plan Financing Act of 2014,” among Legislators,  
water districts and stakeholders. The measure includes $2 billion for  
storage, $1.5 billion for watershed protection, watershed ecosystem  
restoration and state settlements, $1.5 billion for water quality and  
water supply reliability, $500 million for the Delta and $500 million  
for statewide flood management.

Brown's proposed bond would be "BDCP (Bay Delta Conservation Plan)  
neutral," the outline stated.

Restore the Delta (RTD) questioned Governor Brown’s assertion that his  
new water bond is “tunnels neutral,” and called upon him to release  
his specific proposed language.

“Governor Brown is using the bully pulpit of his office to insist that  
his bond proposal is tunnel neutral,” said RTD Executive Director  
Barbara Barrigan-Parrilla, "However, with  $700 million marked for  
statewide water related habitat, flows, and water quality in  
watersheds, Restore the Delta questions if these funds will be used to  
create the water fund account needed to make the Delta tunnels project  
operational.”

“We are calling on Governor Brown to release the specific proposed  
language of the bond to prove that it is truly Delta tunnels neutral.   
According to documents from a Freedom of Information Act Request  
filled by the Kern County Water Agency, BDCP water exporters are  
expecting the State to fund a water flows account for over $1 billion  
so that they can receive full export levels from the project,” said  
Barrigan-Parrilla.

“This documented assurance reveals that the water exporters thirst  
will not be quenched by a tunnel project that simply promotes  
reliability, but rather by one that produces more and more from  
Northern California groundwater supplies, rivers, and the SF Bay-Delta  
estuary," she stated.

Asssembly Member Mariko Yamada (D-Davis) summed up the feelings of  
many tunnel opponents when she said at a big rally against the BDCP at  
the State Capitol on July 29, “We don’t want to support a water bond  
that is tunnels neutral. We want a bond that is tunnels negative.”

Here is the link to documents showing that the water exporters are  
counting on money from a state water bond to help finance the project  
and mitigate its damage to fisheries, river flows and the Delta: http://restorethedelta.org/documents-for-august-6-press-release/

BDCP background: Governor Jerrry Brown's Bay Delta Delta Conservation  
Plan to build the 35-mile long peripheral tunnels won't create one  
drop of new water, but the project will lead to horrendous  
environmental degradation, according to tunnel critics. The  
construction of the tunnels, estimated to cost $67 billion, will  
hasten the extinction of Central Valley Chinook salmon, Delta and  
longfin smelt and other fish species, as well as imperil the salmon  
and steelhead populations on the Trinity and Klamath rivers.

Friends of the River and other BDCP opponents say Brown's "legacy"  
project will destroy the largest estuary on the West Coast of the  
Americas that provides a nursery for many species. It will harm  
salmon, halibut, leopard shark, soupfin shark, sevengill shark,  
anchovy, sardine, herring, groundfish and Dungeness crab populations  
stretching from Southern Washington to Southern California.

Under the guise of habitat restoration, the BDCP will take vast tracts  
of Delta farmland, among the most fertile on the planet, out of  
production in order to irrigate toxic, drainage impaired land on the  
west side of the San Joaquin Valley and provide Delta water to  
Southern California developers and oil companies conducting fracking  
and steam injection operations in Kern County.

The tunnels are being constructed in tandem with the federal  
government's plan to raise Shasta Dam, a project that will flood many  
of the remaining sacred sites of the Winnemem Wintu Tribe that weren't  
inundated by Shasta Dam.

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