Delta tunnels: Major changes to environmental restoration could endanger Brown's water plan

ContraCostaTimes.com ^ | 4/11/15 | Paul Rogers - Mercury New

[NormsRevenge]

Gov. Jerry Brown has billed his $25 billion plan to build two massive tunnels under the Delta as a way to not just make it easier to move water from north to south, but also increase the reliability of water supplies and bring back salmon and other endangered species.

But now the Brown administration is proposing a major and politically risky change: dropping a 50-year guarantee to restore the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta's environment. A centerpiece of the project, the environmental plan included $8 billion to preserve 100,000 acres of wetlands and dozens of other restoration efforts.

The dramatic course correction, whose details have not yet been made public, comes after biologists at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and other federal agencies told the state they won't issue permits for the environmental plan. The reasons, the biologists say, is that the state cannot prove it will restore salmon, smelt, sturgeon and other wildlife struggling for survival in the Delta.

Losing the guarantee of 50 years of environmental restoration would create a substantial political problem for one of Brown's signature projects.

[NormsRevenge]

Fish or people Fish or people.. ??

Next Question?

[NormsRevenge]

Does Moonbeam see the Moon Rising.. and the green tide ebbing?

[Paladin2]

Red Tide rising

[Jim Robinson]

Train to nowhere.

[Carry_Okie]

Fish or people Fish or people.. ??

Next Question?

Why does it have to be an exclusive "or"?

[Fungi]

25 billion here, 68 billion for the choo choo train, and hundreds billion more elsewhere. The problem is not the money, it is the the thinking behind the money. The problem in California is leadership, simply stated in two words—RAT leadership.

[NormsRevenge]

I could coexist with a nice crappie and sunfish pond in my backyard.. I hear ya tho.. too many of one leads to too few of another .. well,, in a way..

[PAR35]

Fish or people Fish or people..

Fish or liberals Fish or liberals..

[NormsRevenge]

I am hard pressed to see any significant benefits either short or long term to building that monstrosity.. except those who lobby and swaggle the contracts to bild it.

[NormsRevenge]

I have a feeeling the fish will lose in the end,, what with the increasing asian influence and populace.. liebrals can only eat so much sushi and suck up so much saki..

[LonePalm]

We would be better off if liberals slept with the fishes.

"Ceterum censeo 0bama esse delendam."

Garde la Foi, mes amis! Nous nous sommes les sauveurs de la République! Maintenant et Toujours!
(Keep the Faith, my friends! We are the saviors of the Republic! Now and Forever!)
LonePalm, le Républicain du verre cassé (The Broken Glass Republican)

[Mastador1]

Always the ridiculous with liberals, 25 billion for tunnels, I wonder how many desalination plants and pipelines could be built for that money. If you stop robbing water from rivers for human consumption do you think maybe nature will balance out? To me it makes more sense to use desalinated water to pump back into aquifers and to be used as much as possible for our cities.

[spokeshave]

Only six delta smelt—the lowest number ever found—were netted in a survey by state biologists last month.In previous years, as many as several hundred had been caught in spring surveys. The population of the three-to-four-inch (eight to ten centimeters) silvery blue fish, which lives only in the San Francisco Bay and the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, has been falling for decades as huge volumes of freshwater are diverted through hundreds of miles of aqueducts and canals.

The new data, gathered in the fourth year of a record-breaking, severe drought, alarmed Peter Moyle, a University of California, Davis biologist, enough to warn state officials that the delta smelt is likely to soon be extinct in the wild.

Here's one of the little boogers.....so make that 5 in existence....

[spokeshave]

Can we get a fingerprint from that pic....so can prosecute and incarcerate someone for taking a Delta Smelt.

[ZOOKER]

Looks like a common minnow to me.

Used to buy them at the bait shop when I went fishing, $1.25 a dozen.

$8 Billion with a B?

[MaxMax]

[Carry_Okie]

The new data, gathered in the fourth year of a record-breaking, severe drought, alarmed Peter Moyle, a University of California, Davis biologist, enough to warn state officials that the delta smelt is likely to soon be extinct in the wild.

Moyle is as responsible as anyone for the demise of this fish. He's milked its endangerment as a career while emphasizing stabilization measures he knows damned well are likely to be ineffective. Meanwhile, the lie continues: The reality is that Delta smelt are endangered as a species because they are hybridizing with two foreign introduced species. The niche once dominated by delta smelt is still occupied by a cross-bred variety. Nor does Moyle do diddly about introduced striped and large-mouthed bass snarfing the native by the thousands. No, he can get fat contracts with the power to kill farming instead, thus pleasing a real estate cabal led by ChiFi's husband Richard Blum.

The man belongs in jail.

[spokeshave]

ChiFi's husband Richard Blum....has the contract to build Jerry "Moonbeam's high speed train to nowhere....

...and to sell off unwanted Post Office buildings.

[CyberAnt]

BTTT

[Stayfree]

Hey Moonbeam, in case your liberal brain is incapable of thinking clearly because your head is so deeply embedded in your ass, endangered species of fish don’t vote, but voters deprived of water due to stupid liberal environmental regulations do vote and...guess what, your ass is headed out the door over stupid liberal water idiocy...