[env-trinity] Is Brown Administration Official Admitting Delta Tunnels Plan Is Collapsing? (Updated)

[Dan Bacher]

http://fishsniffer.com/index.php/2016/03/18/is-brown-administration-official-admitting-delta-tunnels-plan-is-collapsing/

http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2016/3/18/1503524/-Is-Brown-Administration-Official-Admitting-The-Delta-Tunnels-Plan-Is-Collapsing?

https://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2016/03/19/18784245.php


Photo of John Laird courtesy of California Natural Resources Agency.

Is Brown Administration Official Admitting Delta Tunnels Plan Is  
Collapsing?

by Dan Bacher

In the video from a recent hearing in the California Legislature, it  
appears that a Brown administration official is admitting that  
financial support for Governor Brown’s controversial Delta Tunnels  
Plan is rapidly collapsing.

On March 11, Secretary of Natural Resources John Laird spoke on behalf  
of the administration during a hearing in San Francisco by the Senate  
Select Committee on the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta entitled,  
“Pending Delta Decisions and their Potential Economic and Other  
Impacts on San Francisco & the Bay Area."

Laird responded to the news that the Westlands Water District , the  
largest agricultural water district in California and longtime  
proponent of the tunnels, used “Enron accounting” to mislead investors  
about a $77 million bond sale, resulting in a settlement with the  
Securities and Exchange Commission over civil charges. He described  
the news as "disturbing" - and then admitted that "it (the California  
Water Fix to build the Delta Tunnels) won’t move ahead unless people,  
it pencils out for people and they sign up and they pay.”

Westlands agreed to pay $125,000 to settle the charges, making it only  
the second municipal issuer to pay a financial penalty in an SEC  
enforcement action. The district’s general manager Thomas Birmingham  
agreed to pay a penalty of $50,000 and former assistant general  
manager Louie David Ciapponi agreed to pay a penalty of $20,000 to  
settle the charges against them.

“It is disturbing,” said Laird during the hearing. “It’s disturbing to  
us. We found out about it just as you did, from the press reports of  
the SEC decision.”

“And, overall, this is, as you say, a beneficiary pays project, where  
the beneficiaries themselves have to decide to do it,” Laird  
continued. “[I]t really depends totally on their ability and their  
willingness to pay for the project. And I think it is totally clear  
that the urban users have the financial wherewithal to do it.”

“I think the real question is how does it pencil out in the  
agricultural regions? But the Governor has been really clear. It’s  
beneficiary pays and that’s what it takes to go ahead and I think it’s  
just a law of economics that it won’t move ahead unless people, it  
pencils out for people and they sign up and they pay," he concluded.

Senator Wolk made the full hearing available to view online. Laird’s  
comments come up about 1:04 on the hearing video: http://sd03.senate.ca.gov/news/2016-03-11-select-committee-sacramento-san-joaquin-delta

You can read the SEC decision here: http://www.sec.gov/litigation/admin/2016/33-10053.pdf

Barbara Barrigan-Parrilla, Executive Director of Restore the Delta  
(RTD), responded to Laird’s comments, noting that financing the  
tunnels will be difficult even for “wealthy urban water agencies.”

“Paying for the tunnels in a drought, when water revenue sales are  
low, will be difficult even for wealthy urban water agencies,” she  
said. “What will make it even worse is when their agricultural  
partners begin to miss payments. “

“Even this year, El Niño has not eradicated the drought. Dry is  
becoming the new norm. The tunnels are not the solution for water  
reliability,” noted Barrigan-Parrilla.

Several experts testified at the hearing that the Water Fix, a  
controversial proposal to build two huge tunnels to divert water from  
the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta and the Bay Estuary for use by  
corporate agribusiness interests, would have a disastrous impact on  
the Bay Area’s environment and economy, including the region’s tourism  
and fishing industries.

“California’s world class economy relies on the sustainability of the  
state’s own natural water conveyance system, the entire San Francisco  
Bay Delta system,” said Senator Wolk in a statement. “In fact, two- 
thirds of Californians and millions of acres of farmland rely on the  
Delta for its water supply. Yet the connection between pending Delta  
policy decisions, specifically the Delta Tunnels proposal, and the  
State of California—its ecosystem and economy—is often lost,  
overlooked or completely ignored.”

The hearing finished off with the question of “What, then, is Plan B?”  
marking a “starting point to explore viable alternatives that will not  
damage the integrity of the Delta economy and ecosystem,” Wolk’s  
Office noted.

Laird’s comment comes as opposition to the Tunnels by ratepayers in  
Southern California, the Livermore Valley and Santa Clara Valley is  
mushrooming. Faced with massive opposition to the Delta Tunnels by  
ratepayers packing a hearing room in Livermore on Wednesday night, the  
Zone 7 Water Agency Board, a State Water Project contractor, rejected  
a request to pass a resolution supporting Governor Brown’s Delta  
Tunnels (WaterFix) project. (http://www.contracostatimes.com/breaking-news/ci_29649995/tri-valley-water-supplier-wont-endorse-states-delta 
)

“Board members noted the lack of key information including  
environmental impacts, costs, and willingness of agricultural  
contractors to pay their share,” according to Restore the Delta.

The construction of the Delta Tunnels would hasten the extinction of  
winter-run Chinook salmon, Central Valley steelhead, Delta and longfin  
smelt, green sturgeon and other fish species, as well as imperil the  
salmon and steelhead runs on the Trinity and Klamath rivers. It would  
cost taxpayers and ratepayers up to $67 billion — and not create one  
drop of new water.

The California Water Fix Plan to build the Delta Tunnels makes no  
financial, economic, environmental or scientific sense. When will 
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