Congressman Jerry McNerney on July 9 applauded the vote by the San Joaquin County Board of Supervisors to oppose the Bay Delta Conservation Plan to build the peripheral tunnels.
"I completely agree with the unanimous vote taken yesterday by the San Joaquin County Board of Supervisors – the BDCP is a bad idea that does nothing to address California’s long-term water needs," said McNerney. "Those of us who live and work in the Delta region deserve a solution that actually protects our vital natural resources. I’ll keep fighting to make sure our voices are heard."
The Supervisors voted 4 to 0 on July 8 to oppose Governor Jerry Brown's plan to build two 35 mile long tunnels under the California Delta and to send nearly 100 pages of critical comments to state and federal officials as part of the public comment period process that ends on July 29.
According to Alex Breitler of the Stockton Record, "Tuesday's vote is consistent with the county's long-standing practice of opposing so-called 'isolated conveyance,' the concept of diverting water away from the Delta into a canal or, in this case, two 40-foot-wide tunnels connecting the Sacramento River directly to giant export pumps near Tracy." (http://www.recordnet.com/...)
"The problem we have is that it doesn't make any additional water available during times of shortage," said Bob Elliott, chair of the Board of Supervisors. "It just takes water from one part of the state and transfers it to another. It doesn't solve our state's water problem."
Elliott said the plan is "unworkable and counterproductive and detrimental for the Delta.
You can read the county's comments on the twin tunnels by going to: recordnet.com/breitlerblog.
Background: The centerpiece of Bay Delta Conservation Plan is the proposal to build twin tunnels to divert Sacramento River water to water contractors south of the Delta. The construction of the tunnels would hasten the extinction of Central Valley salmon, Delta and longfin smelt, green sturgeon and other species, as well as imperil the salmon and steelhead populations of the Klamath and Trinity rivers.
Governor Brown's "legacy" project will destroy the largest estuary on the West Coast of the Americas that provides a nursery for many species. It will harm salmon, halibut, leopard shark, soupfin shark, sevengill shark, anchovy, sardine, herring, groundfish and Dungeness crab populations stretching from Southern Washington to Southern California.
The habitat "restoration" proposed under this project will greenwash this environmentally destructive project. In a surrealistic scenario, the BDCP will take vast tracts of Delta farmland, among the most fertile on the planet, out of production in order to irrigate toxic, drainage impaired land on the west side of the San Joaquin Valley and provide Delta water to Southern California developers and oil companies conducting fracking and steam injection operations in Kern County.
The tunnels are being constructed in tandem with the federal government's plan to raise Shasta Dam, a project that will flood many of the remaining sacred sites of the Winnemem Wintu Tribe that weren't inundated by Shasta Dam. There is no doubt that the tunnels and Shasta Dam raise plans constitute cultural genocide against the Winnemem Wintu and other Northern California Tribes.
For more information, go to: http://restorethedelta.org/