The California Delta Water Meeting will be held March 1 at 6:30 p.m. in the Discovery Bay Elementary School gymnasium. The event features special guest speaker Supervisor Mary Piepho; Susanna Schlendorf, district director for Assembly member Joan Buchanan; and Environmental Water Caucus representative David Nesmith.
The meeting will provide information on a variety of water-related topics, including a short history of the Bay and Delta, a summary of major Delta water projects, water conveyance and storage, and will address concerns over a possible peripheral canal.
According to SFBDF Publicity Chair Mike Guzzardo, “The purpose of the meeting is to let the community know what a great job they have done so far with (fighting) the 2-Gates project, and give them a good overall picture of what is going on now and what is most likely going to happen in the future. We need to continue the outreach to the community, to let the public know that it’s not over.”
The 2-Gates project, a five-year experimental program designed to save the Delta smelt by rerouting them away from the water pumps on Old and Middle rivers, was delayed in December by the Obama administration’s Federal Interim Act report which called for –among other items – the re-evaluation of the 2-Gates program.
The fish protection project is a joint venture by the State Department of Water Resources, the Federal Bureau of Reclamation and the Southern California Metropolitan Water District, which – if successful – would implement the installation of gates at Old River between Holland Tract and Bacon Island, and Connection Slough between Mandeville and Bacon Island. The automatic gates would be closed at various times of the year for as much as 20 hours per day, according to some reports.
The SFBDF has in recent months successfully managed to slow the 2-Gates project by extending its public comment period. The group hopes to eventually force the Bureau of Reclamation to provide an Environmental Impact Report for the Discovery Bay and Delta regions.
The next step, said Guzzardo, is the public meeting, an event he hopes will garner support and educate the community at large: “We just want people to understand what is going on and that there is still a lot of work to be done. The 2-Gates project is a short-term strategy to a much bigger picture. This is not just a Discovery Bay issue.”
Discovery Bay Elementary School is located at 1700 Willow Lake Road. For more information, call 925-354-3800 or visit www.nodeltagates.com.
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