STOCKTON – Today, Restore the Delta called for the abolition of the Delta Stewardship Council (DSC) in a powerful comment letter directed at the Council’s recently released Draft Program Environmental Impact Report (DPEIR) on the Delta Plan Amendments that would greenlight the Delta tunnels and other new storage projects around the state.
 
In the letter, Restore the Delta disclosed that 65 of 75 impacts listed in the report were significant and unavoidable according to the DSC, which justified such harmful impacts as reflective of the DSC’s inability to control what other state and federal water agencies do.
 
Policy Analyst for Restore the Delta, Tim Stroshane writes,
“The DSC is a bureaucratic redundancy lacking meaningful authority to benefit either the people of the Delta or of the state of California. The DSC should be abolished and its useful functions, such as the Delta Independent Science Board, relocated to another more appropriate state agency.
 
“Furthermore, we find that in the Draft Plan EIR for the amendments that:

• “The Council’s proposed Delta Plan amendments are planning activities, yet they take no account of State of California environmental justice, human right to water, and anti-discrimination policy requirements.
• “The proposed Delta Plan amendments fail to set measurable standards for reducing reliance on the Delta and for making conservation a way of life in California.
• “The proposed Delta Plan amendments fail to address in a meaningful way the significant and unavoidable impacts resulting from construction and operation of new conveyance. Instead, the DSC so to speak passes the administrative buck back to other state agencies.”

 
To read Restore the Delta’s comment letter, click here.

BACKGROUND:
For years, Restore the Delta, environmental groups, and Delta residents have requested the Delta Stewardship Council to follow Delta Reform Act mandates to reduce reliance on the Delta, invest in existing levees, protect fish, and stop the damage from operation of the state and federal water pumps near Tracy. Instead, the DSC chose to promote ”dual conveyance” systems in order to aid the Brown Administration and special interest water districts attempting to push through the Delta Tunnels proposal in the last year of Governor Brown’s term.