Fish Sniffer On Demand Digital Edition 3817 August 2- 16 2019 | Page 24
22
Aug 2 - 16, 2019
VOL.38 • ISS. 17
Newsom Administration Begins
Public Process for Delta Tunnel
T
he Gavin Newsom Administration,
after deciding to no longer support
Governor Jerry Brown’s Twin Tunnels
project, is forging ahead with a one Delta
Tunnel proposal as part of Newsom’s “new”
Water Portfolio program.
The Department of Water Resources has
announced the beginning of the public
process for a “new Delta Conveyance
Facility.”
“The Department of Water Resources
(DWR) and the State Water Project (SWP)
Contractors plan to begin a public process
to negotiate proposed amendments to the
SWP water supply contracts for a new Delta
Conveyance facility,” according to DWR.
“The announcement for the first negotiation
session, which is scheduled for July 24,
2019 at 10:00 a.m. at the DoubleTree by
Hilton Hotel, 2001 Point W Way, Sacra-
mento, CA 95818 can be accessed here.”
As is often the case with the Department
of Water Resources and California Depart-
ment of Fish and Wildlife, the agencies
gave little advance notice to the angling
public for this meeting – and sent out the
meeting notice too late to be timely for this
publication.
Then on July 17, I received an announce-
ment from the Portfolio Recommendations
Group, an “ad hoc gathering of leaders
from over 80 urban water districts, ag
water districts, tribes, environmental justice
groups, business groups, environmental
groups, flood agencies, fire agencies and
watershed groups,” for a public meeting on
July 30, 1 to 5 p.m. at the Library Galleria,
828 I Street, Sacramento, CA.
“All interested parties are invited to join
this focused 3-month effort to develop
recommendations for Governor Newsom’s
Water Resilience Portfolio,” according to
the group. “The initial unvetted, unscrubbed
list of possible recommendations is on
the web site: portfoliorecgroup.org. These
will be discussed at the July 30th meeting
along with any additional recommenda-
tions submitted before then. The web page
describes the process and has a Submit
button where you can send in your ideas for
additional recommendations.”
For more information, you can also
contact: Jonas Minton at jminton@pcl.org,
or Jason Peltier at jepelt@me.com
The water portfolio that the tunnel is an
integral part of nothing new. For example,
Nancy Vogel, the director of the Governor’s
Water Portfolio Program at the California
Natural Resources Agency, promoted the
Delta Tunnels as part of “California’s overall
water portfolio” back in 2014 when she was
the assistant director of public affairs at the
Department of Water Resources.
In an April 4, 2014 letter to the Chico
Enterprise Record responding to an editorial
regarding Sites Reservoir, Vogel stated, “As
the assistant director of public affairs at the
Department of Water Resources, I think
it’s important to reiterate that a Bay-Delta
Conservation Plan is just one part of
California’s overall water portfolio, aimed
at complementing existing and planned
efforts to manage the state’s water needs
in the face of climate change and growth.”
(https://www.chicoer.
com/2014/04/05/
letter-delta-tunnels-
are-just-one-part-of-
water-solution/)
*Trolling
Newsom’s support
Motors
of one tunnel to
*Fishfinders
divert water from the
*GPS
Delta to corporate
*VHF
agribusiness and
Radios
Southern California
*Radar
water agencies is no
surprise. Newsom
*Batteries
received a total
and
of $637,398 from
Chargers
agribusiness in his
2018 campaign for
Largest Service
Governor, including
Center
$116,800 from
in the West!
Beverly Hills agri-
business billionaires
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Linda and Stewart Resnick, the owners
of the Wonderful Company two of the
strongest supporters of the Delta Tunnel and
promoters of numerous attacks on environ-
mental protections for salmon and other fish
species.
Could those contributions have influ-
enced Newsom’s decision to not reappoint
Felicia Marcus as Chair of the State Water
Resources Control Board, his decision to
reappoint CDFW Director Chuck Bonham
and DWR Director Karla Nemeth, his
decision to appoint Mike Lyons as a special
new “Agricultural Liaison” to the Gover-
nor’s Office, his decision to support Big
Ag’s voluntary agreements or his decision
to go ahead with a one tunnel plan?
The Revolving Door: From
the Resources Legacy Fund to
Newsom’s Water Portfolio Program
all human impacts on the ocean other than
fishing and gathering.
In 2014, I called Zeke Grader, the long
time executive director of the Pacific Coast
Federation of Fishermen’s Associations who
passed away in September 2015, about a bill
sponsored by Senator Hannah Beth Jackson
to protect a “marine protected area”, the
Vandenberg State Marine Reserve, from oil
drilling, due to loopholes in both the Cali-
fornia Coastal Sanctuary Act and the Marine
Life Protection Act Initiative.
Grader, who supported the bill, pointed
out how the very need for the bill “high-
lights what a failure the MLPA Initiative
was.”
“If these are true marine protected areas,
they why are we allowing drilling and
other insults to the ocean in them?” asked
Grader. “The whole MLPA Initiative was a
phony process that provided an opportunity
for Big Green and government bureau-
crats to write press releases claiming these
were ‘protected areas’ when in reality the
fishermen and Tribes got screwed. We
should have bans on oil drilling in all of the
marine protected areas.”
The Resources Legacy Fund that Vogel
served as communications director for
continues to be a sponsor of the controver-
sial “marine protected area” program.
In addition, Vogel was deputy secretary
for communications at the California
Natural Resources Agency from 2015 to
2017 and assistant director for communica-
tions at the Department of Water Resources
from 2012 to 2015.
She frequently served as a spokesperson
to promote Governor Jerry Brown’s
Delta Tunnels project to export Northern
California water to corporate agribusi-
ness interests on the west side of the San
Joaquin Valley and Southern California
water agencies. Fishermen, tribal leaders,
conservationists and environmental justice
advocates considered the twin tunnels to
be potentially the most environmentally
destructive public works project in the
state’s history.
Vogel was a principal consultant for the
Senate Office of Oversight and Outcomes
from 2008 to 2012. She was a staff writer
for the Los Angeles Times from 2000 to
2008 and for the Sacramento Bee from 1991
to 2000.
The Governor’s Office announced Nancy
Vogel’s appointment to director of the
Governor’s Water Portfolio Program on
May 2, two days after Governor Gavin
Newsom issued an executive order directing
state agencies to “prepare a water resilience
portfolio” for California.
The order seeks to “broaden Califor-
nia’s approach on water as the state faces
a range of existing challenges, including
unsafe drinking water, major flood risks that
threaten public safety, severely depleted
groundwater aquifers, agricultural commu-
nities coping with uncertain water supplies
and native fish populations threatened with
extinction.”
Vogel’s recent career is very typical of
the revolving door between government
agencies and private corporations and NGOs
— and the links between environmental
processes — that characterize California
politics. Prior to Vogel’s appointment by
Newsom, she served as director of commu-
nications at the controversial Resources
Legacy Fund since 2017.
The Resources Legacy Fund Foundation
was the funder of the Marine Life Protec-
tion Act (MLPA) Initiative to create faux
“marine protected areas” in California.
Catherine Reheis-Boyd, President of the
Western States Petroleum Association,
chaired the MLPA Blue Ribbon Task
Force to craft “marine protected areas”
in Southern Cali-
fornia at the very
same time that she
was promoting
the expansion of
offshore drilling in
the same region that
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