<h1 class="Headline">Water worries: Important meeting is packed to the gills, but what’s the plan?</h1>
<a href="http://www.newsreview.com/chico/content?oid=1906175">http://www.newsreview.com/chico/content?oid=1906175</a><br><br>
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By
Tom Gascoyne
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<br>CHICO NEWS & REVIEW<br>
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This article was published on <a href="http://www.newsreview.com/chico/2011-01-13/archive">01.13.11</a>.
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<table class="ContentImageRight" align="right" border="0" width="300"> <tbody><tr><td> <img src="http://www.newsreview.com/imager/water_worries/b/original/1906175/fe09/news3-1.jpg" alt="" title=""> <div class="ContentImgCaption">
Many
locals interested in preserving the North State’s water resources
turned up for the water meeting hosted by the Bureau of Reclamation.
<div class="ContentImgCaption">PHOTO BY DUGAN GASCOYNE</div> </div></td> </tr> <tr> <td><br></td> </tr> </tbody></table>
<p>Close to 200 people, an unusual admixture of farmers and
environmentalists, jammed into a conference room in the Chico Masonic
Center Tuesday evening (Jan. 11) to listen and then give input on
proposed water transfers from sellers in the North State to buyers in
the south scheduled to span the next decade.</p>
<p>Lacking, however, was any clear description of the transfer plan.</p>
<p>The meeting was hosted by the federal Bureau of Reclamation—the
largest wholesale water supplier in the United States—and a state water
district called the San Luis & Delta-Mendota Water Authority, which
represents agricultural water districts in the south.</p>
<p>According to its printed agenda, the purpose of the meeting was
three-fold: Provide information about creating an environmental-impact
statement and report; gather input from the public on alternatives and
environmental issues; and answer questions. But it was obvious early on
that a vast majority of those in attendance were a bit suspicious about
the real intentions of those putting on the meeting.</p>
<p>Before the festivities began, Louis Moore, a spokesman for the Bureau
of Reclamation, offered a verbal explanation for the meeting.</p>
<p>“It enables us to go out to the public and share with them what we’ve
heard and what we’ve developed up to this point,” he said. “And it
allows the public to comment on what we’ve presented.”</p>
<p>Brad Hubbard, also with the bureau, addressed the gathering with a
slide show and said there was no specific project defined yet.</p>
<p>“We have a general scope that we are going to present tonight,” he
said. “There are no designs; there are no project descriptions available
yet. We are not going to get that together until we hear from you, go
through the scoping meetings, get the final comments and develop the
alternatives.”</p>
<p><b>Barbara Vlamis, executive director</b> of local water-protection group AquAlliance, said the information offered was much too vague to elicit any meaningful comment.</p>
<p>“How do they expect to get any kind of input on whatever impacts
there could be if you don’t even know what the project is?” she asked.</p>
<p>Vlamis did allow that having a public meeting on proposed water
transfers was something she as an environmentalist had been requesting
for decades. She referred to the bureau’s literature that specifically
mentions it will abide by current guidelines capping transfers to
600,000 acre-feet of water each year.</p>
<p>“That is what they are going to study,” she said. “Whether they transfer it or not, we don’t know.”</p>
<p>Local environmental attorney Richard Harriman said the meeting was
not being run by the rules set out by the California Environmental
Quality Act and the National Environmental Policy Act.</p>
<p>“You can’t go forward with commentary without having a project
description,” Harriman said. “This is simply an improper procedure in
terms of the law. We need to have another meeting where we know what the
project description is.”</p>
<p>And so it went, with a couple dozen public comments, all questioning or downright condemning the proposed water transfers.</p>
<p>At the end, Hubbard, from the bureau, said he wasn’t surprised by the
tenor of the meeting. “We knew before coming in here that people were
going to be a little emotionally charged,” he said.</p>
<p>Hubbard had two more of these meetings to address, one in Sacramento
the following night and one in Los Banos on Thursday (Jan. 13). He said
he didn’t expect nearly the same amount of emotional outpouring at
either as the meetings head south.</p>
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