The Delta Plan bill by Assemblyman Jared Huffman,
D-San Rafael (formerly AB 39), is schizophrenic in
both the clinical and the common senses of the word:
it is both delusional and internally contradictory.
The delusion arises from the bill's acceptance of the
notion of coequal goals for the Delta, adopted by both
Delta Vision and the BDCP as a way to make as many
people as possible happy. This notion has always
been flawed because it is not possible to guarantee
water supplies for people and agriculture and at the
same time guarantee water for the ecosystem.
Huffman's bill has to include the BDCP; otherwise, the
governor will never sign it. But the BDCP is being
presented as a Habitat Conservation Plan. According
to state and federal law, a HCP should focus on
habitat improvement. Since the main objective is to
find adaptive management strategies that will enable
endangered species to recover, levels of exports
cannot be determined in advance.
Having set itself the task of guaranteeing contradictory
goals, this bill establishing the Sacramento-San
Joaquin Delta Reform Act of 2009 cannot help being
contradictory in trying to devise a plan.
Some sections of the bill are eloquent in describing
existing Delta communities and values and the Delta
economy ("existing developed uses . . . are essential
to the economic and social well-being of the people of
this state"). There is even a proposal for making the
Delta a National Heritage Area. But elsewhere, the bill
makes it clear that maintaining the Delta in its present
form is not the business of the state. Several times, it
refers to the Delta as "evolving." All human and
natural communities evolve, but they change faster if
they are made to change with strategies like
refocusing "the economic and public values of Delta
agriculture."
Similarly, the bill includes a detailed discussion of
flood control, but mostly for the state and federal water
projects; local flood protection plans may be
incorporated, and the plan will "promote" emergency
preparedness, appropriate land uses, and strategic
levee investments. At the outset, the bill says that
landowners are not entitled to state funding to
maintain or repair private levees, suggesting an end
to the subvention program for levee maintenance.
There appears to be no commitment to protecting the
Delta as a common pool, although it is "the hub of the
California water system." And even more apparent is
a lack of knowledge regarding levee protection in the
Delta - private levees must be maintained so as to
keep stress off of the state and federal levees that
protect hundreds of thousands of urban residents in
the Delta.
In one small section, the bill calls for regional self-
reliance and says that it is the policy of the state to
reduce long-term dependence on water from the Delta
watershed. Then it spends pages describing a plan
to enable continued dependence.
The bill claims that the Delta Plan Act would not affect
area of origin rights protections under the law. Then it
refers specifically to sections of the Water Code that
have consistently been violated when water needed in
the Sacramento Valley has been exported and when
storing and releasing water for use outside the Delta
has not met objectives for salinity control, an adequate
Delta water supply, and maintenance of the common
pool.
Early actions under the Act can proceed with just a
quorum of the Delta Stewardship Council. (Neither
the Council itself nor a quorum are defined in this
bill.) One early action is to be the appointment of an
Independent Science Board. Apparently recognizing
that the science applied so far to this issue has not
been good, the bill repeatedly calls for using "the best
available scientific information."
One early action of the council will be coming up with
a finance strategy for developing the Delta Plan.
Coming up with a strategy is all this bill says about
how the plan will be paid for.
The council will get DFG started on some identified
near-term restoration projects in the Delta. DFG is
also supposed to submit information and
recommendations that it "deems reliable" regarding
the Delta's instream flow needs, something DFG has
not so far been able to do.
The bill uses "department" and "board" without
defining them, but context makes it clear that the
board is the SWRCB. The board is supposed to
charge the department for the costs of instream flow
needs analysis "pursuant to the board's authority to
regulate the water rights of the State Water Project and
the federal Central Valley Projects." It appears that the
State Water Contractors, through DWR, would pay for
this analysis of instream flow needs-a clear case of
conflict of interest.
The bill includes reference to a "special master" (a
water master) to help decide whether board's
determinations of instream flow needs "were arbitrary
or capricious."
The bill gives control of the BDCP process to the Delta
Stewardship Council and incorporates the BDCP into
the Delta Plan. It requires analysis of different
conveyance alternatives but does not consider a no-
conveyance alternative. The Independent Science
Board is supposed to review data and hypotheses on
which the BDCP's adaptive management is based.
Apparently the whole process will go forward more or
less as the BDCP intends, but under the Delta Plan.
Alternative conveyance requires no further legislative
approval. It is here that we find Assembly Member
Huffman's implicit approval for construction of the
peripheral canal.
But except for "the board" charging "the department"
for instream flow needs analysis, this bill doesn't
suggest how any activities or projects associated with
the Delta Plan (apparently including both conveyance
and storage-a canal and dams) will be paid for.
Tomorrow, we will discuss funding as it is laid out in
the other bills.
