<html><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "> <a href="http://www.fishsniffer.com/blogs/details/bay-delta-conservation-plan-delayed/">http://www.fishsniffer.com/blogs/details/bay-delta-conservation-plan-delayed/</a><div><br></div><div><a href="http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2014/08/28/18760835.php">http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2014/08/28/18760835.php</a> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(17, 17, 17); "><blockquote class="summary" style="font-family: verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 16px; ">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. <br> </blockquote><center style="font-family: verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; "><div class="media" style="font-family: verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10px; text-align: center; padding-top: 12px; padding-right: 12px; padding-bottom: 12px; padding-left: 12px; "><img width="800" height="533" alt="800_caleen_sisk_and_jessica_lopez.jpg " style="border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; " src="cid:0ACD73EC-C25E-4C47-9856-8AC54188CC4E"><br><strong>800_caleen_sisk_and_jessi...</strong><br><small style="font-family: verdana, arial, sans-serif, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10px; "></small></div></center><br><div class="article" style="line-height: 16px; margin-top: 12px; "><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Verdana" size="6">Bay Delta Conservation Plan Delayed! </font><br><br><font class="Apple-style-span" face="verdana, arial, sans-serif">by Dan Bacher </font><br><br><font class="Apple-style-span" face="verdana, arial, sans-serif">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. </font><br><br><font class="Apple-style-span" face="verdana, arial, sans-serif">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. </font><br><br><font class="Apple-style-span" face="verdana, arial, sans-serif">"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." </font><br><br><font class="Apple-style-span" face="verdana, arial, sans-serif">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. </font><br><br><font class="Apple-style-span" face="verdana, arial, sans-serif">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." </font><br><br><font class="Apple-style-span" face="verdana, arial, sans-serif">“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.” </font><br><br><font class="Apple-style-span" face="verdana, arial, sans-serif">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. </font><br><br><font class="Apple-style-span" face="verdana, arial, sans-serif">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. </font><br><br><font class="Apple-style-span" face="verdana, arial, sans-serif">"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." </font><br><br><font class="Apple-style-span" face="verdana, arial, sans-serif">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. </font></div></span></div></body></html>