was something called for in the 2009 legislation on the Delta. That really is an opportunity to look more broadly than what the BDCP [Bay Delta Conservation Plan] can do for the ecosystem and the things we need to do to meet the co-equal goals of environmental sustainability in this important area and water supply reli- ability, while making sure that the needs of the folks in the Delta area are addressed.
“What do you think has changed in the last 10 years and what do you see for the next 10?”
– Sue McClurg, Water Education Foundation
I think there’s a lot of potential. Even though the Delta Stewardship Council doesn’t have a lot of very strong regulatory power, it has a lot of potential for moral authority on this. And a lot of potential for pull- ing people together from the various agencies that are working on differ- ent pieces of this to meet and say, “OK, this is how we’re going to make this plan happen,” and poten- tially really coordinate these various actions
very strong position right now to push that forward. He’s in a very strong position right now. It’s very clear that he’s worked up, he’s feisty, he’s got lots of energy, and I expect that water is going to be pretty high on his priority list. (Editor’s note: In his Jan. 24 State of the State address, Brown said a massive failure of the Delta “would be comparable to Hurricane Katrina or Superstorm Sandy,” and that he would do “whatever I can to make sure that does not happen.” He called for two tunnels 30 miles long and 40 feet wide to convey water at a cost of about $14 billion. “Yes, that is big but so is the problem,” he said.)
Watch Gov. Jerry Brown talk about the importance of water in his State of the State Address.
much better than before. The BDCP is a critical component that is being developed as something that – if it succeeds – ought to be able to just be slid right into the Delta Plan, and it’s really key for looking at how we address the incredible degradation in habitat for the species, both the fi sh that everybody hears about, but also a lot of terrestrial species and birds.
Pitzer: Gov. Brown at a press conference last year said he “wanted to get [stuff] done.” What kind of power does that put behind everything when you’ve got the governor saying that?
Leavenworth: Well, the context of that quote was, of course, he was talking about a friend of his who had recently passed away and he had been to the funeral, so he was talking about it in the context that he realizes he may not be around forever, and he wants to have a legacy. And he wants to have a legacy on water. In Novem- ber, if he had lost at the polls with his tax measure he would not be in a
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I would totally agree that if this whole thing collapses and we go back to 20 or 30 years of litigation, it’s going to be a disaster for the Delta and the only people that will benefi t will be the lawyers who’d get rich off of more litigation. But I do think the
BDCP has got some serious problems that have to be confronted and that the governor will have to confront. One of those is just whether it pencils out for the water contractors. There are a lot of unknowns right now about how much water needs to go for fl ows as opposed to exports at different times of the year, and there’s some division within the water contracting commu- nity between Westlands and Kern and so that’s a big, big issue. At the end of the day, does this project make sense the way it’s been proposed – 9,000 [cubic feet per second], twin tunnels – so that’s one big issue. And the other just as big issue is whether they’re going to analyze all the alternatives that are out there to try to achieve this goal. I think from the environ- mental community’s standpoint, they are waiting to see if there’s going to be real analysis of some other alterna- tives, either a smaller facility, or some other combination of things that might achieve these twin goals of protecting and restoring the Delta and also improving reliability.