[env-trinity] CV Biz Times: Despite losing key lawsuit, state forges ahead with Delta Twin Tunnels scheme

[Tom Stokely]

http://www.centralvalleybusinesstimes.com/stories/001/?ID=32251
Despite losing key lawsuit, state forges ahead with Delta Twin Tunnels scheme 
by Gene Beley, Delta Correspondent

SACRAMENTO 
March 12, 2017 9:01pm    
•  Is Brown administration ignoring the courts?•  “These massive tunnels don’t solve these problems and may aggravate them”•  WITH EXCLUSIVE VIDEO 
Jan McCleery, a Discovery Bay resident who has been dueling with Gov. Edmund Gerald Brown Jr.’s California Delta tunnel vision for more than eight years with strong, organized support from her upscale community, says it is nearly “unbelievable” that the Delta Stewardship Council is holding workshops to amend the Delta Plan that still promotes the twin tunnels as the first alternative to “fix” the Delta. After all, Discovery Bay Delta residents, along with Friends of the River, Restore the Delta, and others who joined in with them to consult on the arguments, won a lawsuit against the twin tunnels, Mrs. McCleery said. She and other Delta advocates, including Restore the Delta, have pointed out for many years now that the present plan would destroy the Delta as a place to live, operate businesses, and attract tourism if construction is allowed to begin on Jerry Brown’s twin tunnels project.And some of the stakeholders providing input to the recent DSC. in Sacramento seemed to agree with her.Attorney Thomas Zuckerman of Stockton told the DSC staff they have the cart before the horse. “Given the history of the development of the State Water Project and the Central Valley Project, there’s a big deficit in supply on the north side of the Delta that conveyance doesn’t resolve. What I mean by this is, as the State Water Project was developed, there was an assumption plan to develop about five million acre feet of firm annual yield from the North Coast rivers. That went bye-bye for a number of difficult reasons,” he said.“The thing that is necessary to understand when we talk about conveyance is the water supply that was contemplated north of the Delta. There is (now) a huge deficit in the system,” Mr. Zuckerman told the meeting. “Just focusing on conveyance and particularly the conveyance that this focuses on now — the tunnels with dual operation — doesn’t really address the problem. The supply was never developed and never will be.”He added that a conveyance facility such as the governor’s twin tunnels cannot be designed “until you identify what the water supply is that you need to convey.”If built, Mr. Brown’s scheme would see construction of two massive tunnels – each 40 feet in diameter. That is so large that half of the 43,000 Cessna 172 aircraft ever built could fly in one direction through one tunnel while the other half could be flying through the adjacent tunnel in the other direction. The tunnels would suck fresh and comparatively clean water out of the Sacramento River before the water could flow into the Delta. It would then be piped to the State Water Project and federal Central Valley Project for sale to San Joaquin Valley growers, urban users in Southern California and Silicon Valley.It would be, in essence, an underground version of Mr. Brown’s voter-rejected Peripheral Canal.Robert Wright, senior attorney for Friends of the River and Restore the Delta, told the DSC staff that it appears they don’t understand the discussion in that the draft proposal amendment designates the twin tunnels as the first choice again.“This happens sometimes when there is a volume of paperwork produced by consultants where folks don’t really realize the consequences,” he said. “If you adopt the discussed draft amendment, you will be declaring the ‘Water Fix’ water tunnels to be the preferred alternative. Our position is, under the Delta Reform Act, that law specifies that three alternatives must be considered.”He said the staff may want to come up with many more, “but one of them is through-conveyance. “To be perfectly candid with you, one of them is also dual conveyance. Of course we would love for you to make through Delta conveyance the preferred alternative. The water exporters and the Department of Water Resources would love for you to make dual conveyance the preferred alternative.”Mr. Wright said the DSC staff needs to change its discussion draft, proposing mandatory approval, to not have the governor’s tunnels as a preferred alternative at this time.“Instead, go through and do all the comprehensive review analysis and then make the decision after getting all the evidence and comments—instead of right from the start,” he said.“The ballgame is conveyance. Is it going to be through Delta? Dual conveyance water tunnels or isolated conveyance? That’s the ball game and why folks are here. That’s why this thing has been controversial. That’s why there was a peripheral canal fight back in 1981 and 1982,” he said.The Elephant in the Room“If the DSC wants to make the water tunnels the preferred alternative in the beginning, we can’t stop you from doing that. But before you do that, we want you to know we really don’t think you should do that,” Mr. Wright said. “This is the elephant in the room.”Sacramento attorney Osha Meserve, from the Soluri Meserve Law Corp., said more emphasis should be put on investing in improvements of the current system. “That would be the least damaging environmentally,” she said. “The tunnels are doing their own environmental review. The things that need analysis are some of these other options.”Sam Safi, an associate engineer in policy and planning for the Sacramento Area Sewer District, feels the DSC has a communications problem with the public. He says the presentations made to the public “will make it sound like an irrelevant document.”Mr. Zuckerman said that after the recent rainstorms, the state needs to revisit flood control issues in the foothill reservoirs. “Apparently we have made some miscalculations that have allowed the dams to spill in some circumstances where they are not designed to spill,” he said.“That means these reservoirs are going to provide less water to the system than they have historically. That is a very good reason to go back to this suggestion to look at the available water supply after the need of the downstream and Delta fisheries are satisfied. What we have left — if that is not enough — where are we going to go to develop the additional supply in order to meet reasonable needs? These massive tunnels don’t solve these problems and may aggravate them and is the wrong approach.”Mrs. McCleery said there will be a Town Hall meeting in Discovery Bay’s Elementary School Gymnasium at 6:30 p.m., Monday, March 13 to rally residents against the tunnels preferred plan being pushed by the Department of Water Resources and the DSC.Watch the DSC at work in this video:Delta Stewardship Council Meeting 3-9-17—Breakout session input to D.S.C from Gene Beley on Vimeo.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://www2.dcn.org/pipermail/env-trinity/attachments/20170313/1b9f48ce/attachment.html>