[env-trinity] Bay Delta Conservation Plan Delayed!

[Dan Bacher]

  http://www.fishsniffer.com/blogs/details/bay-delta-conservation-plan-delayed/

http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2014/08/28/18760835.php
Photo: Caleen Sisk, Chief and Spiritual Leader of the Winnemem Wintu  
Tribe, and Jessica Lopez, Chair of the Concow Maidu Tribe, at a  
protest against the Bay Delta Conservation Plan to build the  
peripheral tunnels at the State Capitol in Sacramento on July 29.  
Photo by Dan Bacher.


800_caleen_sisk_and_jessi...

Bay Delta Conservation Plan Delayed!

by Dan Bacher

State officials announced Wednesday that the Bay Delta Conservation  
Plan (BDCP) to build the peripheral tunnels will be delayed and a new  
plan, EIR/EIS and implementing agreement will be drafted, followed by  
the beginning of a new public comment period.

The decision was made after the state and federal agencies received an  
avalanche of thousands of public comments, the vast majority sharply  
criticizing the plan and accompanying environmental documents for an  
array of flaws.

"The Department of Water Resources and the other state and federal  
agencies leading the Bay Delta Conservation Plan will publish a  
Recirculated Draft BDCP, Environmental Impact Report/Environmental  
Impact Statement (EIR/EIS), and Implementing Agreement (IA) in early  
2015," according to yesterday's announcement on the BDCP website. "The  
agencies are currently reviewing the comments received through the  
public comment period that ended on July 29, 2014. The scope of the  
partially recirculated draft documents will be announced in  
approximately six to eight weeks."

The recirculated documents will include those portions of each  
document that "warrant another public review" prior to publication of  
final documents. The public will also have the opportunity to review  
the final documents prior to their adoption and any decisions about  
the proposed actions.

Restore the Delta and other opponents of the environmentally  
destructive peripheral tunnels hailed the delay and redrafting of its  
Draft Bay Delta Conservation Plan EIR/EIS and a new public comment  
period. The opponents said the delay and redrafting of the governor’s  
water tunnels plan shows it is "fatally flawed, does not meet state or  
federal standards, and lacks a financing plan."

“The delay in the BDCP shows that it is fatally flawed. There is no  
financing plan. They cannot finance it because the water is not  
there,” said Barbara Barrigan-Parrilla, executive director of RTD.  
“Delaying the BDCP will not change the fundamental flaws underlying  
it: it doesn’t pencil out, there is no surplus water for export, and  
you can’t restore the San Francisco-San Joaquin Delta estuary by  
draining water from it. The delay shows the power of public  
engagement. Thousands of pages of comments were turned in, everything  
from simple statements from citizens to complex analyses by experts.”

Barrigan-Parrilla said the EIR/EIS is "fatally flawed" due to its  
failure to include a viable funding plan, exclusion of any true no- 
tunnels alternatives, failure to comply with the Endangered Species  
Act as evidenced by numerous scientists’ red flags, misrepresenting  
taking water to be a “conservation” plan, secret BDCP planning with  
the exporters and their consultants, and lack of public outreach to  
non-English speakers.

Tom Stokely, Water Policy Analyst with the California Water Impact  
Network (C-WIN), said he was not surprised with the delay in the BDCP  
and accompanying federal documents.

"This is not unexpected because we knew the environmental documents  
were fatally flawed," said Stokely. "The problem is that that they  
can't fix the BDCP because the project can't meet the requirements of  
the Endangered Species Act and other state and federal environmental  
laws."

The Bay Delta Conservation Plan to build the peripheral tunnels will  
hasten the extinction of Sacramento River Chinook salmon, Central  
Valley steelhead, Delta and longfin smelt, green sturgeon and other  
fish species, as well as imperil salmon and steelhead populations on  
the Trinity and Klamath rivers. Under the guise of habitat  
"restoration," The $67 billion project will take vast tracts of Delta  
farmland, among the most fertile on the planet, out of production in  
order to deliver subsidized water to corporate agribusiness interests  
irrigating toxic, drainage impaired land on the west side of the San  
Joaquin Valley. 
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