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<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>A forward on the previous e-mail that I sent about
the PC.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Tom Stokely</FONT></DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial">----- Original Message -----
<DIV style="BACKGROUND: #e4e4e4; font-color: black"><B>From:</B> <A
title=kierassociates@suddenlink.net
href="mailto:kierassociates@suddenlink.net">Kier Associates</A> </DIV>
<DIV><B>To:</B></DIV>
<DIV><B>Sent:</B> Sunday, January 18, 2009 9:58 AM</DIV>
<DIV><B>Subject:</B> Further thoughts etc in re the Peripheral Canal</DIV></DIV>
<DIV><BR></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Garamond size=4>Tom<BR><BR>In my self-anointed role as
regimental historian (and you may wish to share this with your Trinity list) let
me try to put the Peripheral Canal in some historical context here :<BR><BR>In
the beginning there was the State Water Project Bond Act. <BR><BR>That was 1960.
The Peripheral Canal was nowhere to be found among the facilities the Act
proposed to fund. The money was needed up on the Oroville site, where they'd
broken ground three years earlier (relocation of the Western Pacific RR out of
the prospective reservoir site ) on Gov Goodwin Knight's SWP pay-as-you-go
policy -- annual legislative appropriations.<BR><BR>But the "progressives" like
incoming Gov Pat Brown knew you couldn't get there on pay-as-you-go -- too much
legislative squabbling, much of it the same then as now<BR><BR>So, since there
was no entity ( one was later created for the purpose) with which to negotiate
Delta issues, and since Delta opposition to the Bond Act was fierce, the Bond
Act drafters just mumbled that part : "Delta facilities", words to that
effect<BR><BR>With the passage (just <U>barely</U> -- there's a whole 'nother
story there) of the 1960 Bond Act, DWR's engineers went to work and produced
(1962, I <U>believe</U> it was) their Delta Alternatives Rpt. <BR><BR>They
identified three alternatives, all involving substantial channel closures.
(Engineers weren't familiar then with the no-project alternative, they're still
not comfy with the concept)<BR><BR>I did a briefing on that rpt at a DFG Water
Projects Branch (where I was a biologist) training session at Asilomar that
winter, calling the alternatives (from a fisheries standpt) "bad, worse, and
unthinkable"<BR><BR>I was detailed to the brand-new Resources Agency in fall,
1964. Bill Grader, Zeke's dad, arrived a couple of months later to serve as the
# 2 guy -- to take the Resources Sec'y, Hugo Fisher's back (they were old
comrades from the CA Demo Council, the breakaway group that had grown more
powerful than the State Demo Cmte). <BR><BR>Fisher and DWR director Bill Warne
spent their years together in the new Resources Bldg slicing one another up.
<BR><BR>(Fisher, by the way, had, as a San Diego State Senator, been the
principal mgr of the Burns-Porter Act that put the Bond on the 1960 ballot. Gov
Pat Brown had imported Warne, initially as DFG director, as he eased out the
beloved Harvey Banks, to get the SWP show on the road)<BR><BR>Bill and I
convinced Hugo of the need for a <U>fourth</U> Delta alternative -- something
that would route SWP <U>and</U> CVP -- water around the Delta w/out requiring
the channel closures -- something that could be fish-screened<BR><BR>Hugo took
us across the street to pitch the Gov. Which we did successfully, with Pat
saying "It's going to cost a lot more. You fellas are going to have to hit the
trail and round up the support that it's going to take." (this is the kind of
stuff that put Fisher and Warne at dagger pts)<BR><BR>Which we gladly pledged
we'd do. We began with the fishing assn's up and down the coast<BR><BR>The years
following were spent defining what became the Peripheral Canal and -- here was
the super-tough part, that which cost, as it turned out, critical time -- trying
to get the Bur Rec to enter into an agreement with us over how a shared Canal
would be operated, a needed Operating Agreement (things never seem to change).
We short-handed the problem statement as "arguing over whose hand is going to be
on the valve" (this, keep in mind, <U>years</U> before CA vs the U.S was decided
making clear the CVP's subordinate position to the CWA)<BR><BR>I can recall
penning in a speech for Pat Brown's ill-starred bid for a third term that "when
Man finally does reach the Moon, he'll be able to make out only two works of Man
on Earth, the Great Wall of China and California's Peripheral Canal". Woo woo.
DWR's engineers had calculated that the width and depth of the Canal would be
sufficient to float the Queen Mary (which was still in service at that
time)<BR><BR>The Reagan years in Sacramento would have been a natural time for
launching construction of the Peripheral Canal -- they had the bid specs
practically out the door at the end of Reagan's tour -- but it
coincided/collided with the dawning of the Age of the Environment. NEPA and CEQA
tripped up the Canal at that pt (as they surely will again and
again)<BR><BR>Which ushers in the Jerry Brown years -- which take the Delta
debate in two directions at once, as only Jerry could : 1- his DWR goes through
an agonizing, multi-year reappraisal of Delta options, and circles right back to
the Peripheral Canal, as 2- his SWRCB begins to introduce some sanity into water
quality planning for the Delta -- which begins to rattle the water rights
cages<BR><BR>The Jerry Brown administration hands off to the Deukmejian
administration a bag of garbage, basically -- a stalled out Peripheral Canal and
a wad of litigation over the John Bryson SWRCB's forward-looking efforts to
define the Delta's water quality protection needs. Those two dozen cases, later
consolidated, get us the Racanelli Decision, invoking for the first time, the
Public Trust Doctrine in Delta affairs<BR><BR>Which ushers in the 1986-88
Bay-Delta water quality/water rights proceedings, which produce a finding - and
draft Order, but no final Order (I've told you-all how SWRCB chair Don Maughan
dissed the draft Order as "merely a staff draft" in order to get re-appointed,
i.e, after the draft Order hit the fan in October, 1988 and Metropolitan Water
District stirred up a fire-storm of protest over the draft from its
customers/telephone tree) -- that demonstrates, based on a zillion hours of
expert testimony, cross-exam, rebuttal, on and on, that 1.6 million afa more
Delta outflow, on average, than that required in the Jerry Brown/Bryson-era
Bay-Delta Order was needed to support the estuary's beneficial uses <BR><BR>One
little fisheries note here : DWR never did come up with a workable fish screen
for the Peripheral Canal. My brother-in-law put himself through Sac State
working as a tech at DWR's PC fish screen mock-up at Hood. When the Jerry Brown
folks came in they shut the testing down (the PC was <U>initially</U> anathema
to them). The mock-up's parts were stacked up, rusting, at the end of what used
to be the pear packing shed there at Hood (It's boat storage now.) Every time I
drove by I was struck by that sorry mess and the fact that fish screen
technology has never advanced for diversions that huge. Ergo, that which Bill
Grader and I visualized 45 years ago, a fish-friendly way of moving water from
the Delta without moving baby salmon along with it, is still just a pipe
dream<BR><BR>So, circling all the way back to your ruminations, Tom, about
piping around the Delta, and given my arc in all this, I, too, have maintained
that I'd support a Peripheral Whatever -- SO LONG AS SUFFICIENT DELTA OUTFLOW TO
SUPPORT THE BENEFICIAL USES OF THE ESTUARY, AS REQUIRED BY LAW, WERE PROVIDED.
<BR><BR>At which pt, as I've said on numerous occasions, tiresome smart-ass that
I am, it <U>might</U> be a 6-inch PVC pipe<BR><BR>'Best to all<BR><BR>Bill
Kier</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Garamond size=4></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Garamond size=4>More from Bill Kier:</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Garamond size=4></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Garamond size=4><FONT color=#0000ff>In addition to the
whose-hand-is-going-to-be-on-the-valve issue that I noted below, there was the
lesser, but still significant matter of cost-sharing between the State and Bur
Rec on the Canal's construction and operation<BR><BR>To put it in context, the
engineers' estimate for construction of those SWP elements that <U>were</U>
spelled out in the 1960 Bond Act -- Oroville, the CA Aqueduct, etc -- was $ 1.76
billion, that was the total amt of the bonds authorized by the Act<BR><BR>By the
time that there was an engineers' estimate for construction of the Peripheral
Canal it was upward of $ 1 billion ('cant recall the precise figure, but it was
in that realm)<BR><BR>The proposed cost split, 55/45, based on projected use as
between the SWP and CVP, didn't sit well with CVP water users/ Bur
Rec<BR><BR>The haggling over these two intertwined matters -- the physical
control of the Canal's operations and the cost-share -- began immediately in
1965 and dragged all the way through the Reagan administration (1967-1975).
<BR><BR>The Peripheral Canal project that the Reagan administration tried,
frantically, to get out the door, to bid, in their dying hours in 1974 (which
helped shape the Jerry Brown administration's <U>initially</U> hard opposition
to the Canal) was still a $ 1 billion Canal <B><U>and it was a go-it-alone
Canal</U></B>, if you can believe it, given the continued recalcitrance of the
CVP users/ Bur Rec<BR><BR>It would have left the Delta with the continuing
damage of CVP pumping<BR><BR>[ And I was having a senior moment, there, where I
said that bit about seeing the Canal from the moon -- I was writing about the
prospective <U>Aqueduct</U> in that 1966 speech. 'sorry about that ]<BR><BR>I
think all this stuff is interesting -- if more than a little disheartening --
because there are these brief moments, typically during droughts, when the smart
money <U>appears</U> to know what they're doing, <U>appears</U> to have it all
together on their Delta agenda. And then something inevitably intervenes --
rain, or whatever -- and the same ol' factions go back to fighting from the same
ol' trenches<BR><BR>As the Delta turns green and slowly slips
away<BR><BR>Bill</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><BR><BR></FONT>At 08:06 AM 1/18/2009, Tom Stokely wrote:<BR></DIV>
<BLOCKQUOTE class=cite cite="" type="cite"><FONT size=2>There are a number of
unanswered questions about the Peripheral Canal. Some have asked me if I
would support one and I ask them what is it? There seem to
be a number of perspectives on what the PC really is. See article below
and Barry Nelson's blog (NRDC) below for some clarification to confuse you
more about WHAT IS THE PERIPHERAL CANAL?<BR></FONT> <BR><FONT
size=2>There are also some issues of honesty regarding some who support a PC,
according to the article below.<BR></FONT> <BR><FONT size=2>I personally
would probably support a pipeline of very limited capacity solely for urban
water use, if it were concurrent with SIGNIFICANT reductions in Delta (and
Trinity) water exports.<BR></FONT> <BR><FONT size=2>For now, it's my
understanding that the PC in DWR's plans and cost estimates consists of a big
unlined dirt ditch that in some places, goes below sea level. I don't
see how that is going to increase reliability in the future world of
earthquakes and rising sea levels.<BR></FONT> <BR><FONT size=2>Tom
Stokely<BR>V/FAX 530-926-9727<BR><A
href="mailto:tstokely@att.net">tstokely@att.net</A><BR></FONT> <BR><FONT
size=2><A href="http://www.mercurynews.com/breakingnews/ci_11438885"
eudora="autourl">http://www.mercurynews.com/breakingnews/ci_11438885</A><?XML:NAMESPACE
PREFIX = O /><BR> <BR>Tough choices on Delta await state
officials<BR>By Mike Taugher<BR>Contra Costa Times Staff Writer<BR>Posted:
01/12/2009 07:53:08 PM PST<BR> <BR>Pushing hard to build a new canal
around the Delta, the Schwarzenegger administration rarely misses an
opportunity to point out how rickety <?XML:NAMESPACE PREFIX = ST1
/>California's water system has become.<BR> <BR>And in their zeal to
get the expensive and controversial aqueduct built, they occasionally
exaggerate.<BR> <BR>For example, when federal regulators imposed new
rules last month to protect endangered fish, the state's water agency
announced, "Delta Water Exports Could Be Reduced By Up to 50 Percent Under New
Federal Biological Opinion."<BR> <BR>It was an alarmist and inflated
claim. But state water officials know the more dire the situation appears, the
more support they will get to divert billions of gallons of water around,
instead of through, the Delta.<BR> <BR>In fact, the water cuts are
significant only when compared to the record-breaking pumping of recent years.
Even then, the 50 percent figure represents a theoretical worst case, not a
certainty or even a likelihood.<BR> <BR>Still, no one can deny that
California faces tough decisions in the coming months and years. The Delta, as
a living estuary, has been pushed to the breaking point by an increase in
water pumping and other stressors. And the demand for Delta water continues to
grow — it is a growing state that has lost water supplies in the Colorado
River to drought and interstate agreements.<BR> <BR>2009 looks to be the
year policymakers have to grapple with the Delta's central dilemma: How much
water can be taken from it for the state's cities and farms and should the
flow come through the Delta or go around it? And a related but rarely uttered
question: How much environmental damage in the West Coast's largest estuary is
acceptable?<BR> <BR>For the governor and many water agencies, the answer
is to build a canal around the Delta even though no one knows how it would be
built or operated.<BR> <BR>In general, a canal would provide cleaner
water and it would eliminate the state's reliance on fragile levees to channel
water to pumps near Tracy that kill millions of fish every
year.<BR> <BR>With the status quo clearly not working, the idea has at
least qualified support from many of the state's water agencies, The Nature
Conservancy, the Department of Fish and Game, and a panel of outside experts
that have been working under the auspices of the Public Policy Institute of
California.<BR> <BR>The flip side is that the canal would reduce water
flowing through the Delta, affecting threatened wildlife there, increasing the
concentration of pollutants and possibly causing stagnation. Delta landowners
fear that building the canal would evaporate state funding for maintaining
Delta levees and islands.<BR> <BR>Delta residents, Contra Costa County
supervisors and others are lining up against it.<BR> <BR>The issue is
moving forward mostly in two plans.<BR> <BR>One, known as Delta Vision,
has been forwarded to Schwarzenegger. It includes a peripheral canal in a
sweeping package of water supply and environmental initiatives that was put
together by, among others, leading opponents of the original Peripheral Canal,
which voters rejected in 1982.<BR> <BR>Schwarzenegger's advisers have
endorsed most of the package, but it is unclear how it would be
implemented.<BR> <BR>The other plan, known as the Bay-Delta Conservation
Plan, is a narrower strategy still being negotiated among water users and
regulators with strong guidance from the administration. It is meant to get
regulatory approval for a canal.<BR> <BR>Details — especially how big it
would be and how it would be used — have yet to be defined, which hasn't
stopped many from declaring they are for it or against it.<BR> <BR>In
effect, the battle lines are being drawn but no one knows what the fight is
about.<BR> <BR>Would anyone oppose the canal if it were made into a
pipeline that was too small to substantially diminish Delta water
flows?<BR> <BR>What if a large, credibly regulated canal took small
amounts of water in most years, but in high-water years took more to refill
Southern California reservoirs?<BR> <BR>Would water users support a small
canal? Would they support a big one that was not used much?<BR> <BR>Would
such a tightly controlled big canal make economic sense? Could it be credibly
regulated in a state where water interests have long had the power to get
their own way? One of the biggest questions has hardly been addressed: How
much water can the Delta lose without damaging it?<BR> <BR>"The
peripheral canal is the narcotic to keep you from thinking about the tough
decisions that need to be made," said Rep. George Miller, D-Martinez, a
leading voice in Congress on western water issues<BR> <BR>The water
supply available to a canal might not be as much as users
hope.<BR> <BR>Federal biologists are now requiring more water to flow
through the Delta in wet years to protect Delta smelt habitat. That's water
that could otherwise be moved south and stored.<BR> <BR>Biologists could
require that more water flow through the Delta, not the canal, to help the
struggling salmon population.<BR> <BR>Nevertheless, the Schwarzenegger
administration appears convinced that the canal is the way to go and state
officials have taken every opportunity to remind reporters and the general
public about the need for a "comprehensive" fix.<BR> <BR>Which goes back
to that "50 percent" reduction.<BR> <BR>That applies only to state, as
opposed to federal, water contractors in dry years. And it assumes regulators
crack down hard any time there's a judgment call to be made.<BR> <BR>To
be fair, the Department of Water Resources also gave reporters a more
realistic number: a 17 percent reduction due to the federal biologists'
ruling. That's what the agency says would be the most likely loss of water for
state and federal water agencies in average years.<BR> <BR>Even that
figure is inflated. The state calculated it by assuming that without the new
permit water agencies would pump more water than they ever have — 6.4 million
acre-feet. Charts distributed by the agency showed contractors most likely
would get about 5.3 million acre-feet in an average year.<BR> <BR>That is
still significantly less than the 6 million acre-feet taken from the Delta in
recent years, but it is not a whole lot less than deliveries before 2000, the
year that a new Delta water strategy was adopted and pumping increased
sharply.<BR> <BR>In effect, it turns out, the courts and court-ordered
environmental protections so far have only modestly turned back the clock on
Delta pumping. But more restrictions are possible.<BR> <BR>Can a growing
state accept those limits? Can it get around them with a canal and reservoirs?
What further regulatory cutbacks might be ordered?<BR> <BR>So many
questions. Might they be answered this year?<BR> <BR>Mike Taugher covers
natural resources. Reach him at 925-943-8257 or <A
href="mailto:mtaugher@bayareanewsgroup.com">mtaugher@bayareanewsgroup.com</A>.<BR></FONT> <BR><FONT
size=2><BR></FONT>
<H2><B>A Tale of Two Peripheral Canals. Or is it Three?</B></H2><FONT
size=2><BR><BR>Barry Nelson
<DL>
<DD>Western Water Project Director, San Francisco
<DD><A href="http://switchboard.nrdc.org/blogs/bnelson/">Blog</A> | <A
href="http://switchboard.nrdc.org/blogs/bnelson/about/">About</A>
<DD>Posted January 8, 2009 </DD></DL><A
href="??">http://switchboard.nrdc.org/blogs/bnelson/a_tale_of_two_peripheral_canal.html</A>
<BR><BR>On Tuesday, the Sacramento Bee reported that <A
href="http://www.sacbee.com/ourregion/story/1521634.html?mi_rss=Our%20Region">The
Nature Conservancy has conditionally endorsed a Peripheral Canal</A>. News
about the canal always travels fast. It's one of the most controversial
projects in the contentious history of California water. <BR><BR>The canal is
designed to divert water from the Sacramento River, just south of the state
capital, and divert it around the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta to the enormous
state and federal water pumps on the Delta's southern edge. A previous
proposal for the canal was rejected by California voters in 1982.
Margins in Northern California, driven by fears of thirsty Central Valley and
Southern California water users, reached historic levels. For example,
97 percent of Marin County voters pulled the lever against the canal.
For the next 25 years, the canal was ignored. It became a third rail of
California water policy. <BR><BR>So what's changed to revive this
debate? Two things. First, our understanding of the risks facing
the Delta has changed. Second, the canal is now more mirage than reality
- more a concept than a concrete proposal. Let's take these changes one
at a time. <BR><BR>Since 1982, remarkably little analysis or
critical thinking has been applied to the Peripheral Canal concept. As
we learned more about changes in the Delta, the estuary's environment, climate
change, water quality, alternative water supplies and more, no one analyzed
how a canal would perform. Little thought was given regarding why
one would want to build a canal in the first place. <BR><BR>This changed in
2007, when the Public Policy Institute of California released an influential
report called "<A href="http://www.ppic.org/main/publication.asp?i=671">
Envisioning Futures for the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta</A>". That report
built on work done by U.C. Davis professor Jeff Mount, which concluded that
there is a 2/3 probability of a catastrophic failure of Delta levees by
2050. These risks are increasing over time, driven by ongoing land
subsidence, inadequate levee maintenance, increasing earthquake risk and
ongoing sea level rise. The failure of levees on a dozen Delta islands
would be a sobering event for hundreds of thousands of Delta residents, for
water users South of the Delta, and for the environment. PPIC suggested
that a canal could be needed, not to increase water diversions, but rather to
decrease the risk of a long-term shut down in Delta pumping as a result of
levee failures. This effort helped shape the Delta Vision Task Force's
work on a comprehensive Delta plan. <BR><BR>Second, today, there is no single
canal proposal. In fact, there is a remarkable diversity of ideas about
a canal. On the one hand, PPIC suggested that a canal could help reduce
the risks posed by earthquakes and sea level rise. In its final <A
href="http://deltavision.ca.gov/StrategicPlanningDocumentsandComments.shtml#FinalDraft">Strategic
Plan</A> the Delta Vision Task Force agreed in concept, and called for
strong new protections for the estuary and a new governance entity to ensure
that a canal would be operated in a responsible manner. Neither PPIC nor
Delta Vision anticipated that a canal would produce much, if any, new water
supply. In fact, both suggested that a reduction in diversions might be
needed. They envisioned a canal designed to increase reliability, not
supply, with major new environmental protections. This is the kind of
canal the Nature Conservancy has in mind.<BR><BR>On the other hand, last
April, the Department of Water Resources released its own preliminary <A
href="http://deltavision.ca.gov/BlueRibbonTaskForce/April2008/Handouts/Item_5d_Report.pdf">analysis</A>
of a canal. The project analyzed by DWR was very different from that
envisioned by PPIC and Delta Vision. It did not include new standards to
protect the Delta. In fact, it relied on weakening and violating
existing environmental standards. It would, according to DWR, lead to a
dramatic increase in pumping. This version of the project would cause
major impacts to the Delta environment, water quality and Delta
agriculture. It would drain upstream reservoirs, leaving little or no
cold water to meet the needs of spawning salmon. This Peripheral
Canal could lead to extinctions and the permanent closure of California's
salmon fishery. <BR><BR>These very different versions of the Peripheral Canal
are just the tip of the iceberg. Some have proposed that the "canal"
should actually be a pipeline. Others have advocated a thousand-foot wide
unlined canal built below sea level on subsided Delta islands. Still
others have suggested an alignment on the West side of the Delta, with a
massive tunnel under the Western Delta to deliver water to the pumps.
Some have argued for "dual conveyance" - pumping through both a new canal and
the existing intakes in the southern Delta. Others insist on "full
isolation." Yet another proposal calls for armoring levees and
separating Delta channels. Delta Vision has called for a new agency to
regulate a canal. That proposal, however, is opposed by water users
south of the Delta. <BR><BR>Finally, after years of study and negotiations,
EBMUD is currently building a (much smaller) canal around the Delta - called
the Freeport Project. In this case, the hard work paid off. As
unlikely as it seems, no one sued to stop EBMUD's project. <BR><BR>In short,
today, the Peripheral Canal is in the eye of the beholder. Different
canal proposals would have dramatically different implications in terms of
cost, yield, benefits and impacts. Nearly every stakeholder group could
find in this list a version of the canal to oppose.<BR><BR>Given this
tremendous uncertainty, it's not a surprise that the debate about the
"Peripheral Canal" is often unproductive. Without specific projects and
careful analysis, this debate is often founded in hunches, history and
near-religious faith. Moving this discussion in a more productive
direction will require three things - all of which are clearly outlined in the
<A
href="http://deltavision.ca.gov/StrategicPlanningDocumentsandComments.shtml#FinalDraft">Delta
Vision Strategic Plan</A>.<BR><BR>First, we need clarity regarding the purpose
of a change in the Delta conveyance system. A canal designed to increase
reliability and help restore ecosystem health would look very different from
one designed to increase diversions. These different projects would have
different costs, impacts and benefits. Specifically, water users South
of the Delta should abandon the outdated assumption that a canal would
automatically result in more water pumped from the Delta. And California
must make a dramatic investment in the "virtual river" - consisting of
conservation, water recycling, urban stormwater capture and groundwater
management. These tools can help California meet its future water needs
without more diversions from damaged ecosystems like the Delta.
<BR><BR>Second, careful scientific analysis must address the unanswered
questions regarding Delta conveyance identified by the Delta Vision Task
Force. The Task Force concluded that a meaningful, final decision on
conveyance is not possible until we answer these tough questions. How
much water would be diverted? How would the project affect the Delta
environment, water quality and salmon runs? How would the canal's
massive fish screens - which would be the world's largest - perform?
What new environmental standards would be put in place? Would those
standards include new protections called for by Delta Vision? How would
the facility fit into a strategy to restore ecosystem health and protect Delta
residents and infrastructure? These answers matter, particularly
for a facility that could cost $20 billion and take 20 years to build.
Water users, regulators, environmentalists, fishermen, the Delta community and
others can't judge a canal accurately without answers to these
questions. The Bay-Delta <A
href="http://www.resources.ca.gov/bdcp/">Conservation Plan</A> process,
which is currently studying a canal, has not yet indicated if or how it will
address these unanswered questions or incorporate key Delta Vision
recommendations. <BR><BR> Third, the legislature must reform the
agencies that manage the Delta, as recommended by the Task Force, with
particular attention to reforming the regulation of the state and federal
water projects. Those projects have, in recent years, been operated with
little regard to the needs of the Delta environment or the requirements of
state and federal law. That's why a federal judge stepped in, as a
result of a lawsuit brought by NRDC, ordering the projects to comply with the
ESA. In another lawsuit, a state judge has ruled that the projects are
violating California's ESA. There are other violations as well.
Governance reform is essential to reestablishing trust that any Delta facility
would be operated responsibly. <BR><BR>The Delta Vision Task Force's Strategic
Plan includes a detailed framework in each of these three areas. The
Task Force, however, has no implementation authority. It is now up to
the Governor, the legislature, state and federal agencies, and stakeholders to
determine if this promising plan will be implemented or if it will simply
gather dust. <BR><BR>No one defends the status quo in the Delta. The
current levees are inadequate. Urban development in the Delta is putting
more and more people at risk of flooding. The Delta ecosystem is crashing, in
large part because of excessive water diversions. That's the devil we
know. On the other hand, we know remarkably little about a Peripheral
Canal. No one believes that a canal alone could solve all of the Delta's
problems. Most importantly, to date, no one has produced a detailed,
credible proposal that meets the test laid out by the Delta Vision Task Force.
<BR><BR>The quickest road to failure in the Delta would be a premature fight
over an ill-defined Peripheral Canal. Such a debate would be more
faith-based than fact-driven and would inevitably lead to gridlock.
We've been here before. <BR><BR>The past several decades are littered with
efforts that failed to resolve the issues in the Delta. Our new
understanding of the Delta, however, shows that the stakes are higher this
time. Extinction is permanent. As is sea level rise. And a
massive levee failure event could unalterably change the Delta and threaten
thousands of residents. If the Delta Vision effort fails, we may not
have another chance. Tags:
<DL>
<DD><A
href="http://switchboard.nrdc.org/blogs/bnelson/tags/showtag.php?tag=baydelta">baydelta</A>,
<A
href="http://switchboard.nrdc.org/blogs/bnelson/tags/showtag.php?tag=deltavisiontaskforce">deltavisiontaskforce</A>,
<A
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