![]() ![]() The status quo in the Bay-Delta is awful for our native fish and wildlife, but the DEIR demonstrates that the Delta tunnel project – at least with the proposed operations – would make things in the Delta even worse.Īnd if that’s not enough, the DEIR excludes consideration of the effects of climate change in assessing whether the proposed project and alternatives will cause significant impacts under CEQA. As a result, all of the alternatives in the DEIR substantially increase water exports from the Delta on average by approximately 500,000 acre feet per year, including significant increases in water diversions in dry and critically dry years (200-300,000 acre feet per year), as the table below from the DEIR shows:īecause the project fails to include environmental protective operational criteria, the DEIR’s modeling (see pages ES-71 to ES-74) concludes that the Delta tunnel (and all alternatives) will reduce the survival of winter-run and spring-run salmon migrating through the Delta, reduce the abundance of Longfin Smelt, increase the number of Delta Smelt that are entrained and killed, and worsen ecological conditions in the estuary (including reducing Delta outflow in dry and critically dry years - see Table 5A-B3.3.4.4-D.). Even worse, DWR’s proposed operations of the Delta tunnel are significantly less protective of the environment than the operations that the National Marine Fisheries Service and other agencies required for the proposed twin tunnel project only a few years ago (California WaterFix), as we explained in this letter to DWR last year. Yet inexplicably, DWR’s DEIR refuses to consider any operational alternatives. Operational criteria for existing and proposed new infrastructure, like the Delta tunnel, will be the difference between existence and extinction for many of our native fish species, including our native salmon runs and the thousands of jobs that depend on their health. When NRDC proposed a single tunnel portfolio alternative in 2013, a critical component was environmentally protective operations that reduced water diversions from the Delta in most years. While there’s no debate that the construction of the proposed Delta tunnel would significantly impact Delta residents and communities for years on end, the impacts to fish and wildlife from a Delta tunnel project crucially depend on how the project would be operated: how much water would be diverted and when, and how much left for the environment. ![]() And if that wasn’t enough, the State Water Board’s CEQA scoping comments for the Delta tunnel explicitly directed DWR to consider one or more operational alternatives that increase flows through the Delta, consistent with the State Water Board’s 2018 Framework. In 2018, the Board released its Framework for completing the update of the Bay-Delta Plan’s water quality standards, which proposes to require increased Delta outflows and improve upstream reservoir storage and water temperature management, resulting in reduced water diversions from the Bay-Delta (on average 2 million acre feet per year). Visit for more information.Why does the Department of Water Resources’ draft Environmental Impact Report (DEIR) for the proposed Delta tunnel project refuse to consider any operational alternatives that increase flows into and through the Delta to protect salmon and the environment?Īfter all, for more than a decade, State and federal agencies have repeatedly concluded, as the State Water Board concluded in 2009, that “he best available science suggests that current flows are insufficient to protect public trust resources.” The minimum Delta water quality and outflow requirements in the Bay-Delta Water Quality Control Plan have not been substantively updated since 1995, and the State Water Board has been working since 2008 to update those outdated and inadequate flow requirements that have caused an ecological crisis. The Town encourages you to explore the single tunnel project and learn more about it. Save the California Delta Alliance, a local Discovery Bay nonprofit, has played an instrumental role in successfully stopping prior attempts at building tunnels and fighting other projects that could negatively impact Discovery Bay and the Delta. The Town of Discovery Bay Board of Directors has opposed the tunnel conveyance projects. Now, the latest proposal for a single tunnel will be released for review in 2022. More recent attempts by the Department of Water Resources to build twin tunnels, called "WaterFix," were finally defeated by environmentalists, Delta farmers, and Delta communities in 2019. Voters defeated a ballot initiative to build a peripheral canal in 1982. Proposed conveyance projects to build huge water intakes on the Sacramento River and re-direct the freshwater around the Delta instead of flowing through it have been highly controversial for years. ![]()
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