[env-trinity] Stockton Record 3 25 09

[Byron Leydecker]

Crowd unleashes flood of comments at peripheral canal meeting

Stockton Record - 3/25/09

By  <javascript:NewWindow(500,550,'/apps/pbcs.dll/personalia?ID=999',0)>
Alex Breitler

 

STOCKTON - Same issue, same building, different decade.

 

About 120 people gathered Tuesday night at the Stockton Memorial Civic
Auditorium for a chance to vent to the powers that be over plans to build a
peripheral canal.

 

Fifteen years ago, some of the same folks met in the same auditorium as part
of the CALFED process, which was supposed to fix the ailing Delta but today
is viewed by many as a failure.

 

On Tuesday, state officials displayed new maps showing a proposed canal
taking water from the Sacramento River and shipping it down the east side of
the Delta, tunneling under the San Joaquin River at Rindge Tract, west of
Stockton, on its way to the massive pumps near Tracy, and from there to the
Bay Area and Southern California.

 

"Didn't most of that land use to be desert anyway?" asked 25-year-old Blake
Joaquin, a wakeboarder. "Why should we give them our water? I don't
understand."

The meeting was one in a series hosted by state officials and water users as
part of the Bay-Delta Conservation Plan, which would basically give water
users continued authority to divert water from the Delta. The plan includes
restoring habitat and funneling water around, rather than through, the heart
of the estuary.

 

"It's an effort that impacts all of us, you in particular," California
Secretary of Resources Mike Chrisman told the largely unhappy audience
before fielding questions and pointed comments.

 

Dante Nomellini Jr., representing Delta farmers, asked state Department of
Water Resources Deputy Director Jerry Johns what assurance he would give
that only surplus water would be diverted into the canal, even during a
drought. "We are a system of laws," Johns said, at which the crowd laughed.

 

 

Byron Leydecker, JcT

Chair, Friends of Trinity River

PO Box 2327

Mill Valley, CA 94942-2327

415 383 4810 land

415 519 4810 cell

 <mailto:bwl3 at comcast.net> bwl3 at comcast.net

 <mailto:bleydecker at stanfordalumni.org> bleydecker at stanfordalumni.org
(secondary)

 <http://fotr.org/> http://www.fotr.org 

 

 

 

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