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This is the letter for week 46 of a weekly climate strike that went on for 4 years in front of San Francisco City Hall, beginning early March 2019. For more context, see this story. For an annotated table of contents to see topics for all the strike letters, see this story. Meanwhile…
STRIKE FOR THE PLANET
As we’ve seen over and over again in California, rerouting water to the desert destroys whole ecosystems, causing irreparable harm.1, 2, 3, 4 Doing something this damaging is criminal; doing it in an era of rapid climate change, during a mass extinction event, is suicidal. And doing it to the Delta is dangerous to San Francisco.
That’s why this week’s letter is about the DELTA TUNNEL.
What’s the problem?
The Delta Tunnel, a plan to pull more water out of the delta to ship south, is yet another attempt to “solve” a problem created by decades of treating California’s biosphere like a plumbing problem. A biosphere is not a plumbing project. Living systems cannot be buried, dammed, split, laid in concrete, or diverted without enormous losses to biodiversity, life, and resilience.
How will a Delta Tunnel hurt California?
California may be a single state but it is composed of multiple bioregions made of very different biotic and abiotic factors. Specifically:
- Southern California is desert.
- Northern California is temperate rain forest to the west and sagebrush steppe to the east.
- The Sierra's biomes are dependent on elevation.
- And the Central Valley changes from marsh to desert depending on latitude and aquifer.5
This means the north is naturally and necessarily wet while the south is naturally and necessarily dry. This is how California evolved. This is what all life in California evolved for or adapted to. This is the life type and distribution that requires the least amount of energy to maintain, and that responds best to extreme conditions likely to occur in California, such as drought and fire.6, 7, 8
Taking water from the north and shipping it south destroys the life that depends on that water. Since that life includes salmon and other anadromous fish that go to the ocean, collect resources, bring these resources back to the rivers in northern CA, and deposit these resources deep in the forests when they die, that means a Delta Tunnel not only condemns these fish species to extinction by taking away their water, but also condemns the species that depend on this resource collection and redistribution.9 That’s what makes salmon a keystone species.
What species depend on the salmon? Bears, obviously, but also orcas, seals, and over 130 other animal species.10 And the forests themselves depend on the salmon.11 Without the fish, without this infusion of fertilizer and their massive amount of nitrogen, the forest is failing. In the face of incredible stresses from a rapidly heating climate and invasive species (like the bark beetle), trees are weakening and dying. If you kill the salmon, you cripple the forest; they are tied together.12
Why does San Francisco need forests?
Our coastal forests create rain.13 Trees provide surface areas for droplet formation, and load the air with particles that provide rain nucleation sites. Redwoods survive by wringing water out of the air and dropping it to the forest floor where it nourishes life, forms into streams, joins up into rivers, and flows down to the Delta. Kill the forest and you do irreparable harm to the water cycle that northern California depends on.
So you take away the water, which kills the fish, which kills the forest. An absent forest can no longer trap rain. The north dries up so there is no water to ship south to the true desert anymore. It’s a Rube Goldberg death machine. You kill both the north and the south with one incredibly stupid and scientifically ignorant idea, benefitting the very few, temporarily, at the cost of life in CA permanently. And it is permanent, because stressed large ecosystems tip into rapidly cascading ecosystem failure far too easily.14, 15
What else would a Delta Tunnel do to San Francisco?
- It damages San Francisco’s fishing industry, and so damages our self-sufficiency and resilience.
- It massively increases saltwater intrusion into aquifers and into the Bay, damaging native ecosystems, and poisoning native plants, animals, and insects.
- In addition to decreasing permanent biodiversity (and hence ecosystem resilience), it also damages layover habitat for migratory species, substantially cutting into their numbers and survival prospects. This includes fish as well as birds and insects.
- It damages the wetlands and tidal marshes that are our best buffers against the damage of ocean level increase.
- It reduces sediment flow into the Bay, sediment that is vital to replenishing wetlands.
- And reducing freshwater flow into the Bay will increase the levels of selenium, a pollutant that causes deformities in birds and fish, and is dangerous to humans eating contaminated fish.16
19th century “solutions” can’t solve the problems facing us now. There’s very very little time in which to act, and no time at all for this kind of retrograde motion.
So what does SF need to do about this?
Unlike most weeks, this week the needed action is easy and immediate; you MUST act today and the action needed is only one email and three phone calls.
- Send an email to DeltaConveyanceScoping@water.ca.gov. Tell them why SF is against any plan that includes diverting more water out of the Delta when it’s clear that we need to be restoring fresh water flow to the Delta in order to save the Bay and all of us who live around it. You might want to mention the incredible environmental racism and cultural genocide wrapped into this plan while you’re at it.17, 18
- Then call either Phil Ting at (916) 319-2019 or David Chiu at (916) 319-2017, and call Scott Wiener at (916) 651-4011 and tell them why the Delta Tunnel is a bad deal for SF (and the rest of the Bay counties). Then call Gavin Newsom at (916) 445-2841 and tell him the same thing.
If you want way more information, go to https://water.ca.gov/Programs/State-Water-Project/Delta-Conveyance/Environmental-Planning where you can see the Notice of Preparation and related information.
And a reminder:
You should already be starting on: massive native tree plantings, black water recycling, all electric and clean energy transportation, getting rid of plastics, switching to all local carbon-neutral or carbon-negative energy, and resilience and self-sufficiency. Notice how all these things tie together?
There are only 42 weeks left.19, 20
FOOTNOTES
1. Owens Valley Water History (Chronology). The Inyo County Water Department. 2020. https://www.inyowater.org/documents/reports/owens-valley-water-history-chronology/.
2. Capital & Main. How A Bottled Water Plant Is Making The Water Crisis Worse For This California Region. Huffpost. 21 May 2015. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/owens-valley-water_n_7345100.
3. Geoffrey McQuilkin. Protection and Restoration: Advocates for Mono Lake Make a Difference. Desert Report. 27 September 2017. http://www.desertreport.org/?p=1969.
4. Kurtis Alexander. “Central Valley sinking fast because of groundwater pumping”. SFGate. 20 August 2015. https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Central-Valley-sinking-fast-because-of-6453686.php.
5. Siera Nystrom. Diversity of Californis: Biomes & Ecoregions. Natural History Journal. 6 September 2016. https://natural-history-journal.blogspot.com/2016/09/diversity-of-california-biomes.html.
6. Ellen O’Shea. “What is a native plant and why are they so important to human and ecosystem survival?” Radical Botany. 15 January 2011. https://radicalbotany.com/2011/01/15/what-is-a-native-plant-and-why-are-they-so-important-to-human-and-ecosystem-survival/.
7. University of Zurich. “Ecosystems cope with stress more effectively the greater the biodiversity”. SicenceDaily. 5 September 2012. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/09/120905083751.htm.
8. Homeostasis and Environmental Factors. ARCH. Accessed 10 March 2020. https://arch.alcaweb.org/archfs/v6/26044/m/b94383b3771e9103a7c9323c7719186d.pdf.
9. Dan Bacher. The Single Delta Tunnel Is Still Bad for People, Fish and the Ecosystem. Daily Kos. 16 February 2020. https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2020/2/16/1919663/-The-Single-Delta-Tunnel-Is-Still-Bad-for-People-Fish-and-the-Ecosystem.
10. Guido Rahr. Why Protect Salmon. Wild Salmon Center. 2020. https://www.wildsalmoncenter.org/why-protect-salmon/.
11. Salmon Ecology 101. Pebble Science. Accessed 10 March 2020. http://pebblescience.org/salmon_ecology.html.
12. Duke’s Seafood & Chowder. “Environmental impact of salmon decline: This isn’t just about fish”. The Seattle Times. 7 February 2018. https://www.seattletimes.com/sponsored/environmental-impact-of-salmon-decline-this-isnt-just-about-fish/.
13. Kate Evans. “Make it rain” Planting forests could help drought-stricken regions”. Forests News. 23 July 2012. https://forestsnews.cifor.org/10316/make-it-rain-planting-forests-to-help-drought-stricken-regions?fnl=en.
14. Jonathan Watts. “Ecosystems the size of Amazon ‘can collapse within decades’”. The Guardian 10 March 2020. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/mar/10/ecosystems-size-of-amazon-rainforest-can-collapse-within-decades.
15. Delta Water Tunnels Would Harm the Bay. San Francisco Baykeeper. 11 August 2014. https://baykeeper.org/blog/delta-water-tunnels-would-harm-bay.
16. Sarah Kellogg. Effects of Selenium Poisoning: Deformed and Dying Fish at Sutton Lake. AppalachianVoices. 5 December 2013. http://appvoices.org/2013/12/05/effects-of-selenium-poisoning-deformed-and-dying-fish-at-sutton-lake/.
17. Mike Chapman. “‘We know what that tunnel is coming for’: Delta water plan draws strong protest by tribes”. Record Searchlight. 3 March 2020. https://www.redding.com/story/news/2020/03/03/delta-tunnel-california-plan-draws-strong-protest-native-americans/4932251002/.
18. Dan Bacher. “Winnemem Wintu, Fishermen, blast Bay Delta Plan”. Censored News. 12 December 2013. https://bsnorrell.blogspot.com/2013/12/winnemem-wintu-fishermen-blast-bay.html.
19. Only 11 Years Left to Prevent Irreversible Damage from Climate Change, Speakers Warn during General Assembly High-Level Meeting. United Nations. 28 March 2019. https://www.un.org/press/en/2019/ga12131.doc.htm. See the action timeline in the report.
20. Paula Murray. “We’ve 10 years to save the seas or life on earth will become impossible”. Express. 23 December 2018. https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/1062990/environment-plastic-pollution-Sir-David-Attenborough-seas-earth.