For Immediate Release: Friday November 30, 2012 Contact: Steve Hopcraft 916/457-5546; steve@hopcraft.comTwitter: @shopcraft Barbara Barrigan-Parrilla 209/479-2053 barbara@restorethedelta.org; Twitter: @RestoretheDelta Final Delta Plan Continues to be Inefficient Fails to Include Measurable Actions for Protecting the Delta The Delta Stewardship Council has just released their Final Draft of the Delta Plan, along with the Draft Program Environmental...Read More

November 29 was a busy day for everyone trying to keep track of what the Bay Delta Conservation Plan (BDCP) is up to. At a Finance Working Group meeting in the morning, BDCP representatives announced their willingness to do a complete statewide benefit-cost analysis, something they have refused for years to do. Dr. David Sunding...Read More

In the afternoon, Deputy Resources Secretary Jerry Meral presided over a BDCP Public Meeting. The meeting was supposed to be webcast, but the Pagoda Building was apparently not a good venue for webcasts, and some interested people in the Delta were never able to see the meeting, although Meral did respond to email questions. Meral...Read More

From deep in the weeds of a meeting like this, it is easy to lose sight of one extraordinary fact: the Peripheral Tunnels are being put forward as a CONSERVATION MEASURE. That is, BDCP assumes tunnels will do LESS damage to the Bay-Delta than current operations of the export projects do. BDCP includes 22 Conservation...Read More

Nancy Vogel, a Department of Water Resources employee blogging for the Bay Delta Conservation Plan (BDCP), has thrown the agency’s support behind a study that minimizes the effect of reduced water quality on agriculture in the Delta. She cites a study by the U. C. Davis Center for Watershed Sciences that found the cost of...Read More

Among the stories that appeared in the LA Times during Thanksgiving week, Diana Marcum reported on a family in East Orosi, Tulare County, who couldn’t use their tap water to wash their Thanksgiving turkey because they live in “one of the many Central Valley farm communities where the supply is tainted – by nitrates, arsenic...Read More

Travelers on Interstate 5 or Highway 99 through the San Joaquin Valley pass mile after mile of almond trees, California’s biggest permanent crop.  Almonds are harvested by mechanical shakers, sweepers, and pickup machines.  These generate a lot of particulate matter that contributes to air quality problems in the San Joaquin Valley, helping to account for...Read More

California has never suffered from a lack of people willing to dream big, even in defiance of common sense. For example, there was Ray Karlovich, who founded Pacific States Land Company in the 1950s.  The company, now run by his son Brett, is a leader in the development of subdivision properties throughout the Antelope Valley,...Read More

Twenty years ago last month, President George H. W. Bush signed the Central Valley Project Improvement Act (CVPIA). The Act included reforms intended to encourage efficient water use, including authorizing transfers of agricultural water and creating a land retirement program to reduce water use on tainted land. It shortened the term of Central Valley Project...Read More

On November 6, the Board of Supervisors of Trinity County adopted a position of opposition to the Bay Delta Conservation Plan (BDCP) to construct an isolated conveyance to move additional Northern California water south of the Delta. The Board resolved as follows: “that until such time as adequate assurance and protections for the public trust,...Read More