[env-trinity] Delta water chief confident peripheral canal will be built

[Joshua Allen]

Delta water chief confident peripheral canal will be built
http://www.chicoer.com/news/ci_17359962

By MIKE TAUGHER - Contra Costa Times
Posted: 02/11/2011 12:20:38 AM PST

SACRAMENTO — The Brown administration's top official on Delta matters said
this week he is confident a new aqueduct can be built to divert water from
the Delta for water users in Southern California.

In his first interview since joining the new administration, Jerry Meral
said events and information developed since he backed the Peripheral Canal
as part of Gov. Jerry Brown's first administration have only strengthened
the case for it.

And estimates developed at the end of the Schwarzenegger administration
about the amount of water that could be taken from the Delta will probably
prove to be in the right ballpark, he said. He cautioned that he was
expressing personal convictions and that final decisions would be made only
after formal reviews.

"I don't want to prejudge this," Meral said, "but something like a facility
roughly of the size in the earlier documents will be proposed, will be
permitted and be built."

Meral, who has a doctorate in zoology, has spent much of his career working
for environmental groups. He was also deputy director of the state
Department of Water Resources from 1975 to 1983, when he supported the
controversial Peripheral Canal that would have skirted the Delta to move
Sacramento River water to the south.

Voters statewide killed that plan in 1982, with strong opposition north of
the Delta.

Now deputy secretary for the Bay Delta Conservation Plan, Meral has the
distinction of being both a prominent environmentalist and a strong
supporter of an aqueduct to reduce reliance on south Delta pumps. Many
environmentalists outright oppose the aqueduct while others who are open to
the idea are much more qualified in their support.

An aqueduct is now the centerpiece for the conservation plan. In recent
months, tunnels under the Delta appear to have overtaken a canal as the
preferred choice.

By using the aqueduct instead of south Delta pumps, and by restoring Delta
wetlands, supporters hope the plan can satisfy endangered species laws and
end water supply disruptions caused by environmental problems in the Delta.

Much of the project costs, more than $12 billion, would be paid for by
Southern California, San Joaquin Valley farm districts and others.
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