The Board of Directors of the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California will be voting at their December 8, 2020 board meeting as to whether they should move forward with Delta tunnel planning costs and which option they will pursue, according to an action alert from Restore the Delta (RTD).
To send in a comment expressing your concerns with the cost and lack of reliability with the project, email this address: dl-boardsupportteam@mwdh2o.com. Keep your comment to about 250 words.
To understand the options they are considering, please click the link below.
http://mwdh2o.com/PDFWWACurrentBoardAgendas/12072020%20Bay-Delta%207-4%20B-L.pdf
Sierra Club California also has an online petition that you can use to send a letter to the MWD Board https://addup.sierraclub.org/campaigns/help-stop-the-delta-tunnels-from-devastating-the-west-coasts-largest-estuary
The letter states:
Vote NO on Funding the Next Phase of the Delta Tunnel
I am writing to urge you to OPPOSE at the December board meeting the proposal to fund the next phase of planning of the Delta Conveyance (aka the Delta Tunnel) project.
The Delta Tunnel project is estimated to cost $16 billion, before inflation, and as much as $40 billion, with MWD picking up at least 65% of the cost, leaving ratepayers to pick up their tab. MWD ratepayers will see higher water bills and property taxes. MWD has already spent $175 million to buy islands in the Delta, and another $50 million was pledged for planning expenses in April.
On December 8, the Department of Water Resources (DWR) will ask the MWD board for a portion of approximately $125 million from MWD for the next phase of planning. In 2022, they will ask for more money as well as more planning and permitting. Over the next four years, in total, they will ask MWD for $222 million (65% of $341 million). Then in 2024, they will ask for the final estimated $15.9 billion, with 65% of that -- roughly $11 billion -- coming from MWD.
The proposed Dec 8 expenditure request comes at a time when the quickly compounding impacts of climate change tell us that dependence on imported water is less viable and less sustainable than ever. Moreover, it comes before the board has completed its own long-term plan -- the Integrated Resource Plan -- and before a new general manager hiring process is completed.
Instead of supporting the tunnel, MWD should develop ways to meet the region’s water demand without the tunnel and with less water imported from unsustainable sources.
Again, I urge you to vote against new planning funding on Dec 8. Thank you.”
The Sierra Club notes that there is less than one week until the big vote at Metropolitan Water District and that they are shy of their goal of 2,000 individual emails, so they are encouraging people to share the link: addup.sierraclub.org/...
For the latest on the Delta Tunnel plans by the Gavin Newsom administration, read this commentary in Cal Matters by Kathy Miller and Chuck Winn, San Joaquin County Supervisors: https://calmatters.org/commentary/reader-reactions/2020/12/delta-tunnel-would-be-costly-and-an-ill-conceived-response-to-todays-challenges/
The article is response to the commentary by Jennifer Pierre, the general manager of the State Water Contractors, “Delta tunnel project would secure California’s water future”; Commentary, Nov. 2, 2020.
Miller and Winn write: “The Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta tunnel plan has nothing to do with ecosystem restoration or environmental justice. It would burden environmental justice communities and increase water bills in the State Water Project service areas. Another massive over-budget state mega-project based on 19th century thinking cannot address current challenges. Persisting in this $16 billion-plus, 20-year construction folly will only further degrade our waterways, ecosystems and communities.”
If built, the underground Delta Tunnel would divert water from the Sacramento River in the North Delta to the state and water project pumping facilities in the South Delta so the water isn’t able to flow through the Delta-San Francisco Bay Estuary. Scientists and fish advocates say the construction of the project would likely hasten the extinction of Delta and long fin smelt, Sacramento spring and winter-run Chinook, Central Valley steelhead, green sturgeon and a host of other fish species.
The Governor's Delta Tunnel project planning is moving forward at a time when the Delta smelt, an indicator species that shows the health of the largest estuary on the West Coast of the Americas, is moving closer and closer every year to extinction in the wild. For the past two years, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife’s Fall Midwater Trawl has caught zero Delta smelt, once the most abundant fish in the entire estuary. This year the first two months of the biological survey have yielded zero Delta Smelt also.
Financial data from www.followthemoney.org reveals that Governor Gavin Newsom received a total of $755,198 in donations from agribusiness, key proponents of the Delta Tunnel, in the 2018 election cycle.
That figure includes $116,800 from Beverly Hills agribusiness tycoons Stewart and Lynda Resnick, the largest orchard fruit growers in the world. The Resnicks are the sponsors of the Coalition for a Sustainable Delta, a corporate agribusiness Astroturf group that seeks to obtain more water from the Delta for corporate growers like the Resnicks and to blame salmon population crashes on the striped bass — even though the two species successfully coexisted for over 100 years.
By fast-tracking the Delta Tunnel plan, promoting the voluntary water agreements, overseeing the issuing of a new draft EIR that increases water exports for the state and federal projects rather than reducing them, and backing Sites Reservoir, all projects that will make the Delta Smelt’s continued existence in the wild even more tenuous, Newsom appears to bending to the wishes of his agribusiness donors.