Barbara Barrigan-Parrilla, Executive Director of Restore the Delta (RTD), and Bill Jennings, Executive Director of the California Sportfishing Protection Alliance (CSPA), will appear at the Stockton City Townhall with environmental activist Erin Brockovich today, February 1, at 6 PM to discuss the relationship between Delta management, the Delta tunnels project and water quality for municipal use.
The event will be held at the Atherton Auditorium, San Joaquin Delta College, 5151 Pacific Ave, Stockton, California 95207.
Other panelists include Stockton Mayor Anthony Silva and water treatment expert Robert W. Bowcock from the Integrated Resource Management, Inc. Stockton Vice Mayor Christina Fugazi will present information from the City of Stockton. (https://www.facebook.com/ErinBrockovichOfficial/)
The event takes place at critical time for the Delta, the state’s fisheries and the public trust. The mismanagement of Central Valley reservoirs and the Delta during the record drought by the Brown and Obama administrations has brought Delta smelt, longfin smelt, winter and spring-run Chinook salmon, Central Valley steelhead and other fish species closer and closer to extinction.
The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation and California Department of Water Resources systematically emptied Folsom, Oroville, Shasta and Trinity reservoirs to export water to corporate agribusiness interests growing almonds and other water-intensive crops on drainage-impaired land on the west side of the San Joaquin Valley, as well as to oil companies, now conducting fracking and other extreme oil extraction methods in Kern County, and Southern California water agencies. The outdated Delta water plan of the State Water Resources Control Board currently allows half of the Delta flows to be exported for Big Ag, according to RTD.
To sign or share RTD’s petition to update Delta water quality standards, go to: https://www.change.org/p/blumenfeld-jared-epa-gov-tell-epa-new-bay-delta-water-quality-standards-urgently-needed
According to Wikipedia, “Erin Brockovich-Ellis (born June 22, 1960) is an American legal clerk and environmental activist, who, despite the lack of a formal education in the law, was instrumental in building a case against the Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) of California in 1993. Her successful lawsuit was the subject of a 2000 film, Erin Brockovich, which starred Julia Roberts as her. Since then, Brockovich has become a media personality as well, hosting the TV seriesChallenge America with Erin Brockovich on ABC and Final Justice on Zone Reality. She is the president of Brockovich Research & Consulting, a consulting firm. She now works as a consultant for Girardi & Keese, the New York law firm of Weitz & Luxenberg, which has a focus on personal injury claims for asbestos exposure, andShine Lawyers in Australia.”