A February 29, 2024 Los Angeles Times feature story by Hayley Smith and Ian James gives voice to opponents of the Delta Conveyance Project who argue project would be an environmental catastrophe. The article details how the tunnel risks worsening the fragile Delta ecosystem by increasing salinity, harming water quality, and jeopardizing endangered species like the Delta smelt and winter-run chinook salmon.
Environmental groups, tribes and local communities dismiss the tunnel as a costly boondoggle and suggest alternative measures like reinforcing levees, restoring floodplains, and adopting sustainable water management practices. We are glad to see concerns outlined such as the irreversible ecological damage this tunnel will cause, as the project fails to align with the state’s current climate reality and could have severe, long-term consequences for both the environment and the communities it affects. Click here to read the full editorial.
The article gives a voice to real people who will be devastated by the tunnel, particularly exposing the unacceptable impact to Delta tribes and farmers. Please see some excerpts below:
Threats to water quality, fish and wildlife are particularly relevant for Indigenous groups in the area who have long relied upon the region’s waterways, said Malissa Tayaba, vice chair of the Shingle Springs Band of Miwok Indians.
The tribe is part of a coalition that filed a Title VI civil rights complaint with the federal Environmental Protection Agency in 2022, alleging that the delta’s environmental decline, as well as the state’s oversight of water resources, was “rooted in white supremacy.” The coalition said those concerns were amplified in February when DWR submitted a petition to the State Water Resources Control Board to change water rights for implementation of the tunnel project.
The Delta was once a thriving wetland that provided plants, animals, clothes, medicine, housing and other materials the tribe depended on, Tayaba said. Its already weakened state would be further injured by the tunnel, which she said would not only continue to deplete fish populations, but also run through numerous culturally significant areas, including a burial site near one of the intakes.
Though state officials said they have conducted outreach to the tribes as part of the tunnel’s planning process, Tayaba said the communications were terse and not meaningful — akin to “checking a box.”
“We have been really working and trying to get our voices heard here on the waterways of the Sacramento River, because whatever happens — well, what has happened already — has affected us negatively,” Tayaba said. “But the Delta Conveyance will only make it worse.”
She added that having more water running in and out of the delta is essential to preserving the estuary’s bounty, such as willow and sedge plants used by the tribe for weaving.
Tribes and environmental groups have accused the Newsom administration of allowing excessive water diversions that have worsened declines in fish populations. Recent state surveys have found decreasing numbers of endangered Delta smelt in the wild. And last year, commercial salmon fishing was shut down along the coast because populations declined dramatically.
“How many more species have to go extinct before something is changed?” Tayaba said. “How much more do we have to lose?”
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“It will slowly kill the little towns, because no one is going to want to live here, no one is going to be able to work here, and no one is going to want to recreate here,” said Virginia Hemly Chhabra, a sixth-generation pear farmer in Courtland. “The place that is so very special to so many people would be forever altered, and there’s no practical way to cushion that.”
“There is no easy way to quantify it,” Hemly Chhabra said as she gazed over the slow-moving Sacramento River from the orchard beside her home. “Parts of it will be a very quick death, and parts of it will be a long, slow death of a thousand cuts. But it will forever change.”
Governor Newsom needs to listen to the people of the Delta, and walk away from this disastrous project.