It’s called “alternative conveyance”
And the Mercury (really the AP) reports on a meeting of the Delta Vision Blue Ribbon Task Force in which several options for a peripheral canal were presented, ranging in cost from $4.2 billion to $17.2 billion.
As Chair Kamei said yesterday, “Everyone south of Tracy is ‘southern California’ when it comes to taking water from the Delta, including us.”
Diane;
Thanks for providing this forum for the community to discuss and learn about water issues.
I am posting a letter that the Mercury News published last year when the PC was again being considered:
Subj: Delta Fix
Date: 9/6/2007 4:08:35 PM Eastern Daylight Time
From: PTFerraro@aol.com
To: letters@mercurynews.com
Editors,
Despite the Mercury New support of the Peripheral Canal during the 1982 referendum, Northern California voters crushed the only feasible method of fixing the broken Delta water delivery system.
When the State Water Project was designed during Papa “Pat” Brown’s administration, the canal was an essential part of the plumbing to make it safe and efficient. Without it, most water officials knew the rivers would run backwards, and fish would suffer serious declines.
When his son, Gov. Jerry put restrictions on pumping in dry years to avoid pumping more salt to cities and farm lands, the greedy interests took to the job of conning voters to dump the canal proposal and the restrictions that were tied to it in the enabling legislation.
Since then, 2 million tons of extra salt per year have flowed with the diverted water, most of it onto farmlands, with guarantees that the land would no longer support agriculture and then it would be easier to justify paving it over to hold down the dust.
We have lost the fish, tomorrow we will lose the farm produce.