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<br><div><div><a href="http://www.appeal-democrat.com/articles/delta-125317-plan-final.html">http://www.appeal-democrat.com/articles/delta-125317-plan-final.html</a></div><div><br></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; ">OFF THE HOOK: Fishing groups oppose final Delta plan</span></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial" size="4"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 16px;"><br></span></font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial" size="4"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 16px;">by Dan Bacher </span></font></div><div><br></div><div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Verdana" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Verdana">Representatives of fishing groups united with family farmers, environmentalists and elected officials on May 16 to oppose the Final Delta Plan adopted by the Delta Stewardship Council because of the big threat the plan poses to Central Valley Chinook salmon and Delta fish populations. </font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Verdana; min-height: 15px; "><br></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Verdana" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Verdana">In spite of overwhelming opposition to the plan, the Council voted 7-0 to approve the plan and the accompanying environmental impact report and regulations.</font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Verdana; min-height: 15px; "><br></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Verdana" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Verdana">“State law told us to develop a legally enforceable Delta Plan that will guide state and local agency actions on water use and the Delta environment,” said Delta Stewardship Council Chair Phil Isenberg.</font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Verdana" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Verdana">“We will now be able to focus on implementing the policies and recommendations that will help achieve the State’s coequal goals of providing a more reliable water supply for California and protecting, restoring, and enhancing the Delta ecosystem while protecting the unique values of the Delta as an evolving place.” </font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Verdana; min-height: 15px; "><br></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Verdana" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Verdana">A press release from the DSC revealed how the Delta Plan is intimately tied to the Bay Delta Conservation Plan to build the peripheral tunnels. “The Plan will eventually include the Bay Delta Conservation Plan (BDCP) when the BDCP is completed and successfully permitted,” the release stated. </font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Verdana; min-height: 15px; "><br></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Verdana" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Verdana">Delta advocates, who held a protest before the meeting in West Sacramento, disagreed strongly with Isenberg's contention that the plan would protect, restore and enhance the Delta ecosystem. They said the flawed plan would instead "drain the Delta and doom salmon and other Pacific fisheries." </font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Verdana; min-height: 15px; "><br></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Verdana" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Verdana">Bill Jennings, executive director of the California Sportfishing Protection Alliance and board member of the California Water Impact Network (C-WIN), began his address to the Council by saying, "Good morning, welcome to the resumption of California's water wars."</font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Verdana; min-height: 15px; "><br></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Verdana" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Verdana">"The Delta Plan fails to comply with the law, and perpetuates an unsustainable status quo that enriches a few powerful water brokers at the expense of reliable water supplies and healthy fisheries," said Jennings. "It is a classic shell game to benefit special interests and, if implemented, would represent a death sentence for one of the world's great estuaries." </font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Verdana; min-height: 15px; "><br></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Verdana" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Verdana">"The Council has squandered a marvelous and unique opportunity," emphasized Jennings. "Because the Council failed to identify and analyze the root causes of California’s water crisis – over-appropriation, unreasonable use, failure to balance the public trust – the Delta Plan and EIR largely recommends that agencies should continue to do the same things that created the crisis in the first place. The Plan and EIR ignore history and are predicated on an artificial reality. They’re little more than omelets of half-truth and distortion to justify predetermined conclusions."</font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Verdana; min-height: 15px; "><br></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Verdana" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Verdana">The peripheral tunnel opponents said the real purpose of the Delta Plan is to get around the court "biological opinions" that restrict water exports in order to protect Sacramento River Chinook salmon, Central Valley steelhead, Delta smelt, green sturgeon and the southern resident population of killer whales (orcas) from extinction. </font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Verdana; min-height: 15px; "><br></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Verdana" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Verdana">"The courts have found that water exporters have threatened the very survival of several fish species,” said Barbara Barrigan-Parrilla, executive director of Restore the Delta. “Now, instead of reducing water exports, the Delta Plan endorses simply moving the point of export to a different spot in the Delta.”</font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Verdana; min-height: 15px; "><br></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Verdana" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Verdana">Independent scientists have found that the diversion of more Delta flows through the peripheral tunnels would hasten the extinction of Sacramento River winter Chinook salmon, Delta smelt, longfin smelt and other fish species. "Yet, that is what the Delta Plan endorses," said Jennings. </font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Verdana; min-height: 15px; "><br></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Verdana" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Verdana">"We have urged the Council to analyze and incorporate the findings of the legislatively mandated flow reports by the Water Board and Department of Fish and Wildlife and the Delta Protection Commission’s Economic Sustainability Plan,” said Jennings. “Following an extensive proceeding involving agencies, academia and non-governmental organizations, the Water Board concluded that a substantial increase in Delta outflow and a return to a more natural hydrograph were necessary to protect public trust resources. The Delta Plan EIR didn’t even consider that report as a major source of information.”</font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Verdana; min-height: 15px; "><br></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Verdana" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Verdana">Dick Pool, Secretary of the Golden Gate Salmon Association, criticized the failure of the plan to address the recovery needs of Central Valley salmon. </font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Verdana; min-height: 15px; "><br></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Verdana" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Verdana">"The salmon cannot be restored with only habitat changes in the Delta," said Pool. "There is a large body of science including the state and federal agencies that recognize that only a combination of both upriver habitat and Delta actions can restore the salmon populations. Delta operations, specifically the pumps in the South Delta, with their strong impact on upstream water movements and reservoir operations, severely impact the survival of juvenile salmon above the Delta. The Delta Plan fails to address these issues."</font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Verdana; min-height: 15px; "><br></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Verdana" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Verdana">Nicky Suard, owner of Snug Harbor Resorts on Steamboat Slough in the Delta, summed up the lack of credible science in the Delta Plan when she described it as "Salad Bowl Science," where the plan officials "pick and choose" the science to justify their pre-determined goals.</font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Verdana; min-height: 15px; "><br></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Verdana" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Verdana">"Don't pass this plan," Suard urged the Council. "It will destroy the Delta and everything in it." </font></div></div></div></body></html>