Breaking: Restore the Delta calls for abolition of Delta Stewardship Council

This just in: Restore the Delta today called for the abolition of the Delta Stewardship Council. The full press release is below:

Restore the Delta Pens Potent Letter Calling for Abolition of Delta Stewardship Council

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.”