Recently in the Sunday Forum, the Sacramento Bee editorial board advanced that the “Delta tunnel project is still stuck with unacceptable baggage.” The Bee captured the upstream water supplier perspective very accurately when it provided:
In the Bay-Delta processes, the state and federal agencies “still haven’t provided guarantees to north state water users that their water supplies and ecosystems won’t be harmed by tunnel diversions….”
“If state and federal officials hope to salvage BDCP, they need to come up with solutions that reduce the project’s impact, as opposed to transferring that impact elsewhere. And while it may be too late to build any kind of trust with stakeholders in the Delta and Northern California, there are steps they could take to reduce the mistrust.
One big step would be to specify, in greater detail, exactly how this project would be operated in different situations. How much water would be diverted during different periods of the year – when salmon are migrating, for instance? How much would be diverted in dry and wet years, and those in between?
Only that kind of specificity – along with decisions on how much water is needed for Delta flows to help fish – will put upstream water users at ease, or at least alarm them less. Operational details would also help settle the ongoing debate about the costs and benefits of this project.”
The full editorial can be seen at: Editorial: Delta tunnel project still stuck with unacceptable baggage.
