A few notes on Delta Stewardship Council chair Phil Isenberg’s November 28 meeting with people in the North Delta, thanks to Nicky Suard of Snug Harbor Resorts.
Isenberg said, “You can’t expect consistency in water flow calculations.” But Suard points out that the State Water Resources Control Board’s 2008 Strategic Plan said that “inappropriate inconsistency can result in inequitable treatment, no common understanding of key water quality and water rights goals, and difficulty in achieving a meaningful evaluation of outcomes.”
Suard notes that in the Delta Plan and BDCP, flow protections are for fish and the restoration of environment. “Watch out” she says, “for the silence on protecting flows for navigation, recreation, diversion for agriculture and residential use.”
For several years, Suard has been keeping an eye on the way the state reverses its earlier assertions, redefines words, and eliminates “inconvenient” places when it produces new maps. Historic waterways and islands get renamed or disappear. She isn’t inclined to attribute these changes to mere carelessness, and neither are we.