FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Restore the Delta 10100 Trinity Pkwy, Suite 120 Stockton, CA 95219 Email: Barbara@restorethedelta.org Contact: Barbara Barrigan-Parrilla Phone:209-479-2053 DATE: August 31, 2011 CORTOPASSI/SPANOS BENEFIT RAISES RECORD DOLLAR AMOUNT FOR RESTORE THE DELTA. RESTORE THE DELTA PRESENTS DINO CORTOPASSI AND TOM ZUCKERMAN WITH DELTA ADVOCATE AWARDS FOR 2011. DOCUMENTARY SCHEDULED FOR COMPLETION....Read More
Eminent domain matters dominated this month’s California Water Commission (CWC) meeting on August 17. The Department of Water Resources (DWR) was asking the Commission to approve a process for taking public comment when considering a “resolution of necessity” intended to lead to eminent domain proceedings. But the discussion covered much wider ground than just the...Read More
Of course the real “bosses” here are the State Water Project and the water contractors who use it. DWR staff are adept at justifying what they are doing for these bosses, although the occasional piece of flawed logic does make its way into the briefings. For example, staff counsel cited close to 70 years of...Read More
Without any obvious context, the geologist briefing the CWC mentioned the West Tracy Fault and told the Commissioners, “You’ve probably never heard of this.” According to a June 2007 technical report assessing faults in the Northeastern Diablo Range, the West Tracy Thrust Fault is a blind fault – the kind with no current surface trace...Read More
Infrastructure design and construction management firm HNTB, based in Los Angeles, has done a survey asserting that the Delta has 1600 miles of levees, and that 162 levees have failed in their history due to intense rains. Notes engineer Robert Pyke, “The HNTB fact sheet and press release are inconsistent with the recent findings of...Read More
Now that the State’s budget problems are solved (!), Governor Jerry Brown is moving on to big infrastructure projects: high-speed rail and the peripheral canal. Brown told the Fresno Bee’s editorial board this week that in the next year, his administration will have a detailed proposal to build a water conveyance system around the Sacramento-San...Read More
Among many other things you will find in the fifth staff draft of the Delta Plan, issued last week, is the subsidence/earthquake/sea level rise mantra repeated over and over and over and OVER. Roger Patterson of the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California (MWD), among others, is going around chanting the same mantra. Facts hardly...Read More
The ability of wealthy interests to get what they want with respect to water extends all the way to using bonds to get California taxpayers to cover their projects, according to a two-part article by Lloyd Carter and Patrick Porgans. In Part 1, Carter and Porgans show how A few of California’s land rich billionaires...Read More
To see this “you pay, we benefit” strategy up close, we only need to look at the July 29 meeting of the Delta Stewardship Council (DSC), as reported by Restore the Delta’s Brett Baker. One action the DSC took was to unanimously adopt an amended Delta Science Program contract, allowing the program to net an...Read More
Perhaps the most substantive undertaking of the Council thus far in its existence was agenda item 7: the East Bay Municipal Utilities District Aqueduct Protection Projects, which would entail levee improvement projects on Lower Roberts Island, Upper and Lower Jones Tract, as well as Palm and Orwood Tracts. In a decision that will have...Read More
