Delta Tribal Environmental Coalition Files Comments on the Bay-Delta Plan – DTEC 1/19/24
Buena Vista Rancheria of Me-Wuk Indians, Shingle Springs Band of Miwok Indians, Winnemem Wintu Tribe, Little Manila Rising, and Restore the Delta, collectively known as the Delta Tribal Environmental Coalition (DTEC), have filed an administrative comment with the California State Water Resources Control Board. The comment responds to the Board’s Draft Staff Report for the Phase II Update of the Bay-Delta Water Quality Control Plan (Bay-Delta Plan). The Coalition is represented by the Stanford Environmental Law Clinic.
The coalition urges the State Water Board to expeditiously update water quality standards sufficient to protect Delta tribes and communities. The longer the Board delays, the more Bay-Delta tribes, communities, and ecosystems suffer. DTEC will continue to press the Board to fulfill its obligations to protect the Bay-Delta and its residents. Read the complete DTEC Comment here.
Statements by DTEC Member Groups
Malissa Tayaba, Vice-Chair, Shingle Springs Band of Miwok Indians
Our existence is tied to healthy rivers, and for far too long the rivers have been diseased by lack of flow from excessive diversions. The Bay-Delta Plan is an opportunity to value our existence through restoration of the plants and animals that depend on healthy rivers. We need a plan that places tribal water needs on equal footing with other water uses. The State Water Board should not squander the opportunity to begin making amends for centuries of violence and discrimination against California’s native peoples.
Ivan Senock, Tribal Historic Preservation Officer, Buena Vista Rancheria of Me-Wuk Indians
Without fully planning for, protecting, and enhancing the Delta through achievable water quality, equitable management, and tribal beneficial uses of Delta watershed rivers and the estuary, the Bay-Delta Plan staff report is woefully incomplete — which is particularly troubling after years of delays due to the closed-door voluntary agreement process which left out Buena Vista Rancheria and the other Delta watershed tribes. Water flows are tied to the health of Tribes, Delta communities, fisheries, wildlife, and plant life — all parts of the environment that are tied to indigenous cultural practices and the overall health of Tribal people.
Gary Mulcahy, Government Liaison, Winnemem Wintu Tribe
The Bay-Delta Plan update Draft Staff Report is basically a ‘farce’. There are a lot of words but no real substance. Almost 600 pages and not one paragraph about how this plan would be implemented. It is like doing a stand-up comedy act with no punchlines. It does include a lot of exclusionary verbiage and insinuation. We may consider this, or this might be something to consider but no concrete answers. Go back to the drawing board.
Barbara Barrigan-Parrilla, Executive Director, Restore the Delta
It is so unjust that Delta communities and tribes, who have spent years requesting with urgency a Bay-Delta Plan to restore rivers and the estuary, have had to expend incredible energy, time, and resources to respond to this completely inadequate document. Politics in California water planning protect powerful interests, and senior level leaders continue to ignore science and protection for all communities and tribes by restoring flows for the estuary.
Elias: Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta tunnel ‘ain’t necessarily’ a done deal – The Mercury News 1/19/24
In late December, word went out from Sacramento: The long-anticipated (and in some quarters dreaded) 45-mile Delta tunnel has been approved. Construction presumably was to start soon, whenever that meant.
…Despite the new state approval, the tunnel project — priced at $16 billion in 2020 estimates and likely to overrun that total by a large margin — still has a long way to go, the Stockton-based group Restore the Delta rejoiced in a competing press release arriving only minutes after the DWR’s celebratory one. Their executive director, Barbara Barrigan-Parrilla, noted that anyone who wants to block the tunnel at least temporarily has until late January to file suit under the California Environmental Quality Act.
“We and our broad coalition … will engage in all necessary processes … to stop the Delta Conveyance Project once and for all,” she said. “Sadly, the (Gov. Gavin) Newsom administration is continuing to waste public dollars and time advancing a project that Californians have rejected for decades and that will not solve our climate water challenge.”
Lawyers have already given notice that they will fight the tunnel on behalf of several local Native American tribes, along with trying to force federal authorities to set scientific standards for “estuary health” before any such project advances.
“Ultimately, the project will die from its own bloated costs,” concluded Barrigan-Parrilla.
Sacramento judge rules DWR lacks authority to issue revenue bonds to finance the Delta Tunnel – Sacramento News & Review, 1/22/24
On January 16, a Sacramento court ruled that the California Department of Water Resources, or DWR, lacks the authority to issue revenue bonds to finance the embattled Delta Tunnel.
…Sacramento, San Joaquin, Contra Costa, Solano, Yolo, Butte and Plumas counties and their related water agencies – with other litigants – had been challenging DWR’s legal right to issue an unlimited amount of bonds to finance the highly controversial tunnel, which is also known as the Delta Conveyance project or DCP.
The Court agreed with the counties, ruling that “DWR exceeded its delegated authority when it adopted the Bond Resolutions, which purported to authorize the issuance of the Delta Program Revenue Bonds.”
Bob Wright, counsel for Sierra Club California and a board member for Restore the Delta, explained the significance of the court decision:
“This is good news for Delta residents and users protecting the impaired and fragile Delta from the destruction that would be caused by diverting significant freshwater flows away from the Delta into a tunnel for export,” Wright argued in his own statement. “It is also good news for ratepayers and taxpayers who would be hit with the many billions of dollars this expensive boondoggle would cost.”