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Delta Tunnel's science-denying premise: diverting more water out of Sacramento will 'restore' fish [1]

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Date: 2022-09-13

Photo courtesy of DWR.

Here is the transcription of my 3 minute comment on the Delta Tunnel Draft Environmental Impact Statement that I made today in the virtual hearing held by the California Department of Water Resources.

I’m a independent journalist that’s covered the fish, environmental justice and water issues for 40 years. Different versions of this same gigantic and wasteful public works project — the Peripheral Canal, the Bay Delta Conservation Plan, the California Water Fix and now the single Delta Conveyance — have cast a dark, toxic shadow over California water policy since it was first decisively rejected by California voters in November 1982 as the Peripheral Canal.

Tunnel proponents claim the tunnel will protect the reliability of water transport infrastructure, address the impacts of sea level rise, and “improve” the Delta’s aquatic conditions. However, the project will do none of these things, instead hastening the extinction of Sacramento River winter and spring-run Chinook salmon, Central Valley steelhead, Delta and longfin smelt and green sturgeon. It’s feared these fish species will die off as the multi-billion tunnel keeps indebting Californians for generations to come.

According to a recent blog post by Doug Obegi of NRDC, “DWR’s proposed operations of the Delta tunnel are significantly less protective of the environment and than the operations that the National Marine Fisheries Service and other agencies required for the proposed twin tunnel project only a few years ago (California WaterFix), as we explained in this letter to DWR last year. As a result, all of the alternatives in the DEIR substantially increase water exports from the Delta on average by approximately 500,000 acre feet per year, including significant increases in water diversions in dry and critically dry years (200-300,000 acre feet per year.”

“Yet inexplicably, DWR’s DEIR refuses to consider any operational alternatives. Even worse, DWR’s proposed operations of the Delta tunnel are significantly less protective of the environment than the operations that the National Marine Fisheries Service and other agencies required for the proposed twin tunnel project only a few years ago (California WaterFix), as we explained in this letter to DWR last year. As a result, all of the alternatives in the DEIR substantially increase water exports from the Delta on average by approximately 500,000 acre feet per year, including significant increases in water diversions in dry and critically dry years (200-300,000 acre feet per year), as the table below from the DEIR shows.”

To read the full article, go to: on.nrdc.org/...

All of the available science reveals that the Delta and longfin smelt, Sacramento winter run and spring run Chinook salmon, Central Valley steelhead, green sturgeon and a host of other fish species need more water flowing down the Sacramento to the Delta to survive and thrive — not less, as the DEIR proposes under the Delta Conveyance Project.

The entire project is based on the irrational and unscientific premise that diverting more Sacramento River out of the Delta will somehow “restore” the Delta ecosystem while providing water supply reliability.

I don’t know of any water diversion project in world or U.S. history where taking more water out of a river or estuary has restored that river or estuary. The Delta Tunnel project, if ever constructed, would be no different.

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2022/9/13/2122690/-Delta-Tunnel-s-science-denying-premise-diverting-more-water-out-of-Sacramento-will-restore-fish

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