Delta environmental group blast Salazar's pro-canal stand
Central Valley Business Times
09/20/2011
A canal larger than the Panama Canal that would be built to take water from the Sacramento River around the Sacramento-San Joaquin River directly to users south of the Delta has gotten the apparent endorsement of Interior Secretary Ken Salazar – and that has raised the ire of Delta conservation groups.
In remarks to the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco on Monday, Mr. Salazar said the solution to the state’s water needs is the still being written Bay Delta Conservation Plan, the drafts of which include a “conveyance system” – wonk-speak for either a canal around the Delta or a tunnel beneath it.
“The Bay Delta Conservation Plan is the most important, most complex long-term water and habitat management plan ever undertaken in the United State of America,” he said. “Rather than simply pumping water from north to south in the Delta, which places immense strain on the system and is unreliable, a new conveyance system would reduce conflicts between water supply and fisheries.”
Mr. Salazar also said it could mean more water gong to users south of the Deltas. That could include farms in the San Joaquin Valley and the vast Los Angeles water system.
“We can do both,” he said, referring to the BCDP management plan for water system reliability and supply. “I don’t believe at the end of the day … that those who are concerned that all of a sudden that you’re going to have a dry Delta to the north as more water is moved to the south will find those views to be counted,” he said.
But groups in the Delta take issue.
"It doesn't make sense to put people to work building infrastructure that will destroy jobs," says Jane Wagner-Tyack, policy analyst for Restore the Delta in Stockton. "Close to 23,000 jobs in the Delta region are linked to Delta agriculture that is threatened by plans to move Sacramento River water under the Delta."
"Exports from the Delta are the primary cause of the destruction of habitat in this estuary," says Bill Jennings of the California Sportfishing Protection Alliance and a Restore the Delta board member. "The process the exporters are using to plan for the Delta's future has been anything but collaborative."
