Smoke cloud over Vallejo (2015-01-31)

Looking East, over Georgia st. towards the Syar Quarry in the Blue Rock Springs area of Vallejo

Critical Comments on the Phillips 66 Rodeo and Santa Maria Refineries Expansion of Combined Production Capacity

Charles Davidson of Hercules (2015-01-27) at [https://archive.today/nEP9d]:
Please read my submitted brief critique of the Phillips 66 EIRs for the “piece-mealed” Rodeo and Santa Maria combined Tar Sands project. The comment is based on my reading of the recirculated draft EIRs for both the Phillips 66 Rodeo Refinery’s Propane Recovery Project and the Santa Maria Refinery’s interrelated Rail Spur Expansion Project and Throughput expansion Projects.
My short comment letter, with slight variation, was sent to both (the Contra Costa and San Lois Obispo) County Planning Commissions and was also based on the great detailed analysis of both Greg Karras (of Communities for a Better Environment) and Dr. Phyllis Fox (of Shute, Mahely and Weinberg). I tried to make my 2-page letter (below) as short and non-technical as possible.

The analysis was made easier in the recirculated EIR compared to the draft EIR, because they finally stated outright that the crude by rail would absolutely not be the highly volatile Bakken North Dakota light shale oil, leaving Canadian Tar Sands bitumen (extra heavy crude) as the only possibility.
Tar Sands and Bakken crude are both land-locked and can only get to CA by rail or barge from up north, but the key P66 project in Santa Maria is a Tar Sands rail expansion project.
The reason that Canadian Tar Sands ends up in Rodeo, is that CA crude from down south would not arrive in 100 car trains and the crude that is pre-processed in Santa Maria goes directly, via their 200-mile pipeline, into P66’s Rodeo coker unit, that only processes heavy crude.

Note: The Tar Sands bitumen is so dense and heavy that it must be diluted with 30% light weight petroleum solvents to liquify it and it is then called DilBit.
Per Greg Karras: DilBit takes 2-3 times the energy to refine as typical or traditional crude, it has unusually high amounts of heavy metals (like nickel and vanadium), it produces more Petroleum Coke (PetCoke) and coking it violently (at 900 degrees Fehrenheit) for a day or so produces lots more propane than would the refining go traditional crude oil, hence part of the reason for the propane recovery project to recover the extra propane. P66 has a nearly one billion dollar contract deal with the Chinese company SinoPec for propane delivery ($850 million).

P66 in Rodeo, at least according to a recent EPA document, is the most polluting refinery in California. The brief, unreferenced document did not break down particular pollutants or whether the pollutants are airborne or water born.
Not stated in my EIR comment letter: It should be noted that P66 in Rodeo has a “Nelson Complexity Index” of 13.6, one of the highest in the world and the highest in the U.S., indicating that the refinery is unusually complex and capable of refining the heaviest crude in order to produce the highest valued products, such as gasoline.

SUBMITTED EIR COMMENT:
Phillips 66 Rodeo and Santa Maria Refineries Expansion of Combined Production Capacity, Tar Sands Refining Capability and Propane Production

The first major problem with Phillips 66’s Santa Maria Railroad Spur Extension Project Recirculated Draft Environmental Impact Report (RDEIR; 1), is that it is a piecemealed project since the Santa Maria Refinery is connected by a 200-mile pipeline to the San Francisco Refinery in Rodeo. In turn, the Rodeo Refinery accepts heavy gas oil derived from semi-refined Santa Maria heavy crude feedstock and then completes the refining processes in order to make higher-valued products, such as gasoline, diesel and jet fuel. Concurrently, a Rodeo Refinery RDEIR is proposing the Propane Recovery Project (1). Multi-project EIR piecemealing is illegal in California under CEQA.

A second major problem with Phillips 66’s Santa Maria Refinery Railroad Spur Extension Project RDEIR is that it fails to disclose the fact that the refineries’ most likely source of crude oil would be a type of high-sulfur, extra heavy crude oil derived from Canadian Tar Sands, called bitumen. Specifically, Phillips’ RDEIR states that light, low-sulfur “sweet” Bakken North Dakota crude oil would be an “excluded” type of refinery feedstock carried by rail into Santa Maria, leaving Tar Sands bitumen as the only other “crude-by-rail” available in large enough amounts. (2) The combined Santa Maria-Rodeo Refinery Projects’ dependence on energy-intensive bitumen refining would make them, cumulatively, high greenhouse gas-producing projects that are capable of emitting increased amounts of toxic pollutants and a large excess of highly flammable propane. – Charles Davidson. Dec. 2014

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Greg Karras from Communities for a Better Environment (CBE) and Refinery Engineer Phillis Fox, from Shute, Mahaley and Weinberger, have critiqued these disparate Phillips 66 EIRs, authored by Environmental Science Associates, for both their Santa Maria Refinery and Rodeo Refinery. Karras and Fox have established that the separate projects are inherently interrelated and interdependent and they each have done a cumulative analysis for these collective Phillips 66’s projects.

Large amounts of partially refined diluted Tar Sands bitumen, i.e. DilBit, will be sent by a 200-mile pipeline to the Rodeo refinery, that is undergoing the Propane Recovery Project. The Santa Maria Refinery is planning two projects, the Rail Spur Extension (CBR) Project and the Throughput Increase Project.

The Rodeo Refinery will finish off the refining of the heavy gas oils sent from Santa Maria in order to create high valued products such as gasoline, diesel and jet fuel. Aggressive refining of bitumen produces large amounts of propane. DilBit dilutent has a large amount of lightweight hydrocarbons, like propane, as well as butane and pentane, which together are over 7% by weight of DilBit and a much larger percentage by volume.

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1) Executive Summary; Phillips SMR Rail Project Recirculated Draft Environmental Impact Report RDEIR. October 2014 ES-5.
2) Phillips 66 Propane Recovery Project RDEIR – SCH# 2012072046 and Phillips 66 Santa Maria Refinery Company Rail Spur Extension Project (RDEIR) – SCH# 2013071028

The Santa Maria and Rodeo EIRs were illegally piecemealed and in their EIRs Phillips tried to obfuscate the real source of the crude, that will be DilBit, like the EIR’s authors imagining a crude influx for some other domestic sources that have dwindle markedly in recent years and decades, like California inland and offshore crudes. Alaska crude has also dwindled in recent decades since its peak, when it was a primary source in-state refinery crude feedstock. These types of domestic crudes are not a practical option in the Santa Maria crude-by-rail expansion project,

The Santa Maria rail spur extension project declares that their will absolutely be no Bakken crude delivered, i.e. that Bakken was explicitly “excluded”, so the only other practical option for delivery by rail is also the most likely rail delivery, being DilBit from Alberta, Canada. To accommodate the fact that DilBit weights much more per barrel and per railroad per tank car than traditional crudes, the RDEIR states that there will be 13 percent less crude within each tanker due to weight limits. The RDER also states that there will be heaters available, that would only be the case should the heavy bitumen in the DilBit separate from the diluent during transportation.

CBE noted that the proposed 10 percent increased processing capacity of the Santa Maria Refinery would indicate real total capacity of about 1 train per day or 344 trains/year, while Phillips’ “RDEIR provides no data supporting its “expected” maximum of 250 trains/year”.

The 200-mile pipeline goes directly into the Rodeo Refinery’s coker, which processes the heaviest portions of crude and heavy gas oils. The coker produces a solid, heavy-metal-laden toxic byproduct, called petroleum coke or PetCoke, that is exported to China and India to burn in place of coal in order to make electricity. High-temperature coking and high-pressure hydro-cracking of the heaviest oils in Rodeo will make a lot of propane and butane, that are sold as Liquified Petrolem Gas or LPG.

The excessive yield of propane recovered will be both from that portion of propane produced by refining extra-heavy DilBit and also by the accumulation of propane-laden DilBit diluent. The Rodeo Refinery currently uses propane and butane to operate their refinery.  Phillip’s plan is to convert the refinery to operating with a large increase in piped-in natural gas, purchased from PG&E.

Phillips has signed a multi-year $850 million dollar contract with the Chinese company, SinoPec, for exporting LPG to China, that would lock Phillips 66 into refining the heaviest crudes. The excess propane generated under this DilBit refining scenario might indicate that the propane must be removed, lest the refinery blow up due to unbalanced thermodynamics. – Charles Davidson. Dec. 2014

Rio Vista housing in Delta demolished after years of abandonment

"Liberty Island development houses demolished"
2014-09-10 by Galen Kusic for the "River News-Herald & Isleton Journal" [http://rivernewsherald.org/articles2014/libertyisland_9-10-2014.html] [https://archive.today/mE0ZW]
Photo By Galen Kusic

The Liberty Island development by Shea Homes in Rio Vista has been completely down town. It is unclear whether Shea will re-build with smaller homes, as the housing market is back on the rise.
The Liberty Island Housing Development, located off Liberty Island Road has been torn down. While the subdivision’s streets, lights and “watchtower” remain, the houses have been demolished over the past week.
The houses were in disrepair, as countless acts of vandalism, scrawled racial slurs on walls, broken windows and bird feces were rampant throughout the 13-house development that never was.
Shea Homes got a permit within the last two weeks from the City of Rio Vista to demolish the homes, in which squatters had taken accustom to staying inside. Shea contracted a company to do the work.
“They have been vandalized and broken into for the last six years,” said Mayor Norman Richardson. “Copper had even been stolen out of the lights. They were in disrepair – I can’t think of a reason not to tear them down.”
The once promising project may form again, with smaller houses being built – but nothing is for certain at the moment. As for now, the once eerie setting of abandoned homes due to the recession is now gone.
At least for now.

Campaign to preserve the San Vincente Redwoods near Santa Cruz

"San Vicente Redwoods, one of the biggest unprotected forests around"

2014-09-02 by Kurtis Alexander for the "San Francisco Chronicle" [http://www.sfgate.com/science/article/San-Vicente-Redwoods-1-of-the-biggest-unprotected-5727123.php]:

Peninsula Open Space Trust Director, Planning Development Gordon Clark surveys the San Vicente Redwoods area in Davenport. Photo: Michael Macor, The Chronicle

For more than a century, the coastal town of Davenport, just up Highway 1 from Santa Cruz, stood in the shadow of a giant cement plant.
Many of the town's 400 or so residents worked in the factory, lived in homes beneath its smokestacks and gazed up at thousands of acres of wooded hillsides that plant operators mined or logged.
But the closing of the plant four years ago - amid a declining economy and environmental concerns - has ushered in a new chapter for the community, and conservation groups marked a major milestone last week in a bid to preserve the picturesque land and open it to the public.
The vast acreage, roughly 6 miles long and 2 miles wide, holds one of the largest unprotected swaths of redwood forest in the region. It's home to mountain lions, peregrine falcons and coho salmon. Environmentalists and local leaders say it's ripe for a trail system linking Big Basin Redwoods State Park and the federally run Coast Dairies bluffs.
"The town of Davenport was there because of the cement plant. Now, we really have the opportunity to pivot and turn a major polluter into a real positive for the community," said Santa Cruz County Supervisor Neal Coonerty, who represents the rugged coastal area north of Santa Cruz.
The preservation effort in Davenport is one of the biggest and priciest the region has seen.

Easement needed -
In 2011, the Peninsula Open Space Trust of Palo Alto partnered with Sempervirens Fund of Los Altos to buy 8,500 acres from plant owner Cemex for $30 million. But because neither group is in a financial position to hold the property and manage it - and California's state park system has been shy about funding new acquisitions - the groups plan to sell the land to a private party.
To make sure the future owner doesn't lay waste to the land, the groups are working with Save the Redwoods League of San Francisco to draw up a conservation easement that would permanently bar development.
Last week, the California Wildlife Conservation Board approved $10 million in public funding to move that easement forward.
"This is one of the most substantial redwood forested properties in the Santa Cruz mountains," said Sam Hodder, president of Save the Redwoods League. "The easement will make sure these lands stay an intact forest, undivided and undeveloped."
The cement plant itself remains in the hands of Cemex. Its future is not known.

Changes feared -
The plant, which opened in 1906, had been a significant employer in the Santa Cruz area, and longtime workers spoke proudly of its history supplying materials for the Golden Gate Bridge, Candlestick Park and the California Aqueduct.
Cemex shuttered it in 2010 because the demand for building materials had fallen considerably during the recession. The company was also struggling to get environmental approval to expand its limestone quarry, and it was reeling from the discovery of cancer-causing chromium 6 in the air around the site.
At that time, fear spread among locals that a developer would swoop in and build luxury homes on the hills once Cemex moved out. Proposals in the past - ultimately doomed by opposition - had called for subdivisions and even a nuclear power plant in the area.

Ready to go hiking -
Now, the plan to protect the Cemex land from development seems to be sitting well with many residents.
Roger Knapp, a real estate agent who lives in Davenport with his wife and 9-year-old son, said he looks forward to bird-watching and hiking on the property, which he can see from his front door.
"It's been privately held and patrolled for a long time, and access has been real limited," he said. "I see this as a real positive."
Knapp's only concern, which is shared by others in the community, is that the redwoods will bring an overwhelming number of visitors to town.
"We're all just hoping Davenport can retain its unique charm," he said. "You can imagine the whole greater Silicon Valley coming to your street, and parking and walking around."
The Land Trust of Santa Cruz County is leading the effort for public access, though it hasn't been determined exactly where visitors might enter the former Cemex property, now called San Vicente Redwoods. And the conservation consortium is still figuring out how crowds will be managed and policed within the sprawling forest.
The jobs lost with the plant closure also remain a concern in town. About 120 mostly union positions vanished, and many residents who didn't move away would like to see another source of employment emerge.
A little work may come with the return of logging on the land. The conservation easement will open up about 45 percent of the property to sustainable timber harvesting as incentive for someone to buy the site, perhaps a timber company, according to the environmental groups.
The terms for logging, though, have not been specified.

Boost through tourism -
Catherine Elliott, project manager with Save the Redwoods League, said she also expects the site to offer an economic boost to Davenport through tourism.
But the most important feature of the project, supporters say, is simply the land itself.
"It's beautiful hiking in these redwoods," said longtime Davenport resident Noel Bock. "How wonderful to have this land opened to the community."


"Group tries to save old-growth redwoods"
2012-11-18 by Peter Fimrite for the "San Francisco Chronicle" [http://www.sfgate.com/science/article/Group-tries-to-save-old-growth-redwoods-4046872.php]:
The hikers paused amid the cool dampness of the ancient forest to get a better look at a truly remarkable specimen of redwood jutting out of a lush hillside across Peters Creek in the Santa Cruz Mountains.
The huge sequoia looked to be at least as large as the Patriarch Tree, a 285-foot giant a short walk away in Portola Redwoods State Park, but none of the walkers could accurately gauge the height of the tree, obscured as it was by the thick canopy.
"That's a big one," said Larry Holmes, admiring the tree's tremendous girth, unusual light-brownish color and the enormous striations in the bark creasing upward along the trunk. The stroll through this 145-acre forest in a canyon south of the San Mateo County town of La Honda was a walk back in time - to a place dominated by 1,000- and 2,000-year-old redwoods - but it is the future of the colossal trees that Holmes is concerned about.


Preserving redwoods -
The 72-year-old Holmes, whose family has for 38 years owned what experts say is the third-largest old-growth redwood grove in the Santa Cruz Mountains, agreed this month to sell it to the San Francisco conservation group Save the Redwoods League. If the $8 million deal goes through, it would forever protect the land and establish a conservation easement on 214 acres of forest at nearby Boulder Creek. In all, 359 acres of some of the last remaining old-growth redwoods along the Peninsula would be preserved.
"The residual amount of old growth in California is 5 percent or less of what it once was, so these trees are precious," Holmes said. "We've always felt they should be part of the park."
The plan for the Peters Creek property is to build trails, work on easements for better public access and, someday when state finances are better, sell the land to the California State Parks. The conservation easement would prohibit subdivisions and timber harvesting around the Holmes family ranch 5 miles away in the Boulder Creek area, which is next to Big Basin Redwoods State Park, California's oldest state park.
But the deal is not yet complete and, as always, money is the issue. The redwoods league must raise the $2 million down payment by the end of the year, or the deal is dead. The rest of the purchase price would have to be paid by December 2013.
The effort has the support of the Portola and Castle Rock Foundation and the Peninsula Open Space Trust, which recently donated $1.1 million to the cause. The work is part of what is called the Living Landscape Initiative, a collaboration among five local conservation groups, including the redwoods league and the open space trust, to protect 20,000 acres of redwoods in the Santa Cruz Mountains.
It is a minor miracle that any redwoods still exist in what was once an enormous wilderness of giant trees, grizzly bears and shaded creeks teeming with coho salmon and steelhead trout. The fish were an important source of food for the Ohlone Indians and later the Spanish, who named one of the creeks Pescadero, which means "fishing place."

Logging by homesteaders -
Logging began in the 1860s to support an influx of homesteaders who came to the area after the California Gold Rush. They were, by all accounts, a rough bunch, including Danish immigrant Christian Iverson, who claimed to be a former Pony Express rider and built the first cabin amid the redwoods.
Iverson split redwood shakes and shingles for a living and, in the 1880s, served as a bodyguard for the wife of Capt. Harry Love, a California ranger who supposedly captured and beheaded the famous outlaw Joaquin Murrieta. One day Love flew into a jealous rage and opened fire on his wife and her protector, only to be shot to death by Iverson.
In 1889, Iverson sold his property to William Page, who had built the first of two sawmills along Peters Creek, which was named after another early immigrant named Jean Peter, who ran a dairy and grew hay and grain.
Page, who also operated a general store and served on the San Mateo County Board of Supervisors, used the lumber to make shingles. He later built a logging road that became known as Page Mill Road. The road, which still exists, was used to transport lumber to Palo Alto.
Many of the old-growth trees survived because the lumber in the area was used mainly for shingles, which require straight grain and selective logging.
The Islam Shrine of the Masonic Lodge purchased the land in 1924 and built cabins and camp facilities for members to use as a mountain vacation resort. The regulations at the Shrine Grove prohibited logging. The Shriners sold the property in 1945 after membership dwindled and the state park was created.

Easing public access -
Bill Middleton, a San Francisco car salesman, owned the Peters Creek parcel for a time and built summer cabins in the area. He died in 1962 and the land was sold to the Holmes family in 1974. The Holmeses bought the Boulder Creek parcel in 1977.
The trail along Peters Creek, which includes an unpaved portion of Page Mill Road, leads into Portola state park, which contains many 200-foot-plus old-growth trees and is famous among naturalists for its beauty. As it is now, the public can reach the redwoods inside the park only via a steep and circuitous 11-mile round trip route. The new acquisition is expected to drastically shorten that hike.
Sam Lawson, the director of land protection for the Redwoods League, said he also plans to work with neighboring property owners on trail easements and with the Portola and Castle Rock Foundation to develop a docent program.
"If everything goes to plan," Lawson said, "we will be able to open this up to docent-led tours soon after the first of the year."
Victor Roth, a state parks acquisitions specialist who was on the hike through the Holmes property, said he is confident the land will eventually be part of the park.
"These are thousand-year-old trees bounded on two sides by state parks," Roth said. "It is my job to identify acquisition opportunities, and given the spectacular resources, this is a special opportunity."

Criticisms of 35-mile tunnels under the Sacramento delta point to destruction of key habitats, loss of species existing only in California

"Delta tunnel plan called a fish death sentence by key group"2014-07-31 by Carolyn Jones for "San Francisco Chronicle" daily newspaper [http://www.sfgate.com/science/article/Delta-tunnel-plan-blasted-by-key-environmental-5657902.php]:
The state's plan to build a pair of 35-mile tunnels under the delta would cause the extinction of winter-run chinook salmon, steep declines in dozens of other species and devastate water quality in San Francisco Bay, an environmental group said Wednesday.
"This project would be a major step in the wrong direction," said Gary Bobker, policy analyst for the Bay Institute, which submitted its 250-page findings this week to the state Department of Water Resources as it updates its Bay Delta Conservation Plan. "Diverting more water from the delta is exactly what we need to stop doing if we're going to have a sustainable ecosystem."
The state's $25 billion plan for the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta calls for two 40-foot-wide tunnels to carry water from the northern end of the delta to the pumps at the southern end. The purpose is to improve water flow throughout the 1,100-square-mile delta; reduce reliance on old, crumbling levees; and potentially increase water allocations to farms and consumers in Central and Southern California.
But, according to the Bay Institute and other environmental groups, the tunnels will leave northern parts of the delta saltier, warmer and with less water - a death sentence for migrating fish, they said. The tunnels would also alter the makeup of San Francisco Bay because less cold freshwater would reach the Golden Gate.
To make up for the loss of habitat, the plan calls for more than 50,000 acres of wetland restoration, including floodplain habitat for salmon near the Yolo Bypass.
But the new wetlands won't be enough to compensate for the change in water quality, Bobker said. The new wetlands may be a boon for birds, but the most pressing need for salmon, sturgeon, longfin smelt and other fish is chilly water that flows from the Sierra snowpack to the Pacific, Bobker and his colleagues said.

'Circling the drain' -
"These species are already circling the drain. They don't have 20 or 30 years for us to see what works," said Jon Rosenfield, a conservation biologist at the Bay Institute who also worked on the report. "All of the chinook salmon would be very much harmed by this. They'd all see declines."
A consultant working on the state's delta plan agreed Wednesday that the northern delta will be saltier, warmer and more stagnant in years to come. But that's largely due to climate change, not the tunnels, the consultant said.
In fact, the plan would improve conditions for salmon by reducing the number sucked into the pumps and providing better water circulation throughout the region, she said.
The impacts of climate change need to be addressed separately, she said. The Bureau of Reclamation, among other agencies, is looking at broader issues related to water supplies and global warming.
The delta plan is backed by Gov. Jerry Brown as well as dozens of water agencies, cities and farming groups, mostly in Southern California. They say it's critical to the state's economy to upgrade its aging water infrastructure and provide a more stable supply of water for farms and development in the central and southern parts of the state.
A few Bay Area groups are also in support, including the Santa Clara Valley Water District, which supplies San Jose and parts of Silicon Valley, and the Alameda County Water District, which serves Fremont, Newark and Union City.
They also view it as a solution to environmental problems, such as inadequate water circulation and the volume of fish that get sucked into the pumps.

Impacts called overblown -
The Bay Institute's reading of the environmental impacts of the plan are overblown, said Nancy Vogel, spokeswoman for the Department of Water Resources. Water quality in San Francisco Bay would remain virtually unchanged, and salmon and other species should actually fare better than they do under the current conditions, she said.
"We wouldn't be doing this if it didn't benefit the salmon," she said. "And we've done extensive scientific analysis and concluded that the effects on San Francisco Bay would be minimal."
Dozens of environmental groups, water agencies and local governments filed responses to the delta plan's environmental impact report this week. The state will review the comments, update the report and eventually submit it to state and federal regulators who would issue the permits.
The California Sportfishing Protection Alliance vehemently opposes the plan.
"This plan puts the estuary on a scaffold and the interests of south valley agriculture on a throne," said the group's director, Bill Jennings. "It's going to make the delta look like an Arkansas lake - warm water and no flow."
Longtime sport fisherman Doug Chance, a press operator from Antioch who was fishing from the Antioch pier Wednesday, said his cohorts from throughout Northern California are fighting the plan.
"The freshwater is already drying up. We used to catch catfish like crazy around here. Now we hardly ever see them," he said. "If they put these tunnels in, hell, I wouldn't be surprised if we started catching stingray and sharks up here. It's all messed up."

"The Deliberate Omission of any True BDCP Alternatives"

2014-07-25 by Bob Wright for "The River Advocate":
The BDCP Draft EIR/EIS alternatives chapter and "Draft Plan alternatives-to-take" chapter fail to include any real alternatives, let alone the required range of reasonable alternatives to the BDCP Water Tunnels water conveyance system upstream from the already imperiled San Francisco Bay-Delta. The Water Tunnels would divert enormous quantities of water from the Sacramento River near Clarksburg, California. As a result of this massive diversion, enormous quantities of water that presently flow through designated critical habitats in the Sacramento River and sloughs to and through the Bay-Delta would not reach the Delta. Flows would be reduced in the Sacramento River,  sloughs and Delta to the detriment of listed and other fish species. All of the so-called project alternatives set forth in the Draft Plan and Draft EIR/EIS are simply different versions of the same project. They all create a capacity to divert more water by way of new conveyance upstream from the Delta. And they do so in the face of the ESA Section 7 command prohibiting federal agency actions that “result in the destruction or adverse modification of [critical] habitat of [listed] species.”
The failure of the BDCP Drafts to include so much as one alternative reducing exports seems at first blush astonishing. After all, a claimed purpose of the BDCP Plan is “Reducing the adverse effects on certain listed [fish] species due to diverting water.” (BDCP Draft EIR/EIS Executive Summary, p. ES-10). As the National Academy of Sciences warned back in May 2011-- in commenting on an earlier version of the BDCP Plan-- “Scientific reasons for not considering alternative actions are not presented in the plan.” (Report in Brief, p. 2, May 5, 2011). More than two years ago, the Environmental Water Caucus (EWC) (a coalition of over 30 organizations including Friends of the River) pointed out to the California Resources Agency Deputy Secretary:
The absence of a full range of alternatives, including an alternative which would reduce exports from the Delta. It is understandable that the exporters, who are driving the [BDCP] project, are not interested in this kind of alternative; however, in order to be a truly permissible project, an examination of a full range of alternatives, including ones that would reduce exports, needs to be included and needs to incorporate a public trust balancing of alternatives.
There has been a complete failure to develop and evaluate alternatives reducing diversions/exports including the EWC Reduced Exports Plan transmitted to the California Resources Agency in December 2012 as well as the more detailed Responsible Exports Plan developed in May 2013.
In fact, this BDCP process ignoring and concealing obvious and direct alternatives that would reduce the “adverse effects on certain [listed] fish species due to diverting water” is not astonishing. It is a deliberate, bad faith, end run on the alternatives analysis requirements of NEPA, CEQA, and the ESA. The exporters have money, lobbyists and power. They are driving the project. They do not want the public including environmental organizations, Indian tribes, Northern California, and San Francisco Bay-Delta interests to have a BDCP alternative that they could support. This concealment and silencing of any alternatives that would reduce exports as opposed to all of the current BDCP alternatives that increase the capacity for exports is calculated to increase the likelihood of the BDCP proponents getting what they want. This bad faith omission of alternatives reducing exports skews the debate in favor of new conveyance and against reducing exports since no other alternatives are presented.
The current BDCP Draft’s omission of the range of reasonable alternatives required by law requires the preparation of a new Draft Plan and Draft EIR/EIS and a new public review period to attempt to cure this fatal flaw.

The Deliberate BDCP Website Suppression of Comments -
After the 40,000 pages of BDCP project advocacy called the Draft Plan and Draft EIR/EIS were released in December 2013 for public review and comment, the BDCP website was closed to the posting of comments and correspondence from the public.  Consequently, an organization or individual attempting to wade through the 40,000 pages of self-interested project advocacy to spot the issues and figure out the truth is unable to learn from the comments and correspondence from other organizations and individuals who are not project proponents. The public’s ability to be informed regarding this project including cons as well as claimed pros would have been facilitated by having access to comments and correspondence made by others during the review process. Instead, the BDCP agencies have done their very best to keep the public in the dark about issues spotted by those who are not project proponents.
This blinding of the public to critical environmental information even extends to comments by sister agencies. Here are just a few of the many possible examples of comments from public agencies that the citizen using the BDCP website does not get to see.  “The BDCP is based upon this misrepresentation: that a massive new twin tunnel  system, which would greatly reduce the natural flow of water through the Delta, qualifies as a ‘conservation’ project to restore the Delta ecosystem and protect species already verging on extinction.”  (County of San Joaquin comments, p. 1, July 9, 2014). Another example is: “Chapter 8 of the current BDCP does not provide the detailed information necessary for potential participating agencies to evaluate individual agency cost-benefit (or feasibility) of the proposed project.” (San Diego County Water Authority,  p. 2, June 2, 2014). There is the June 24, 2014,  comment letter from the Delta Stewardship Council. The public trying to understand the project is not informed that the State agency responsible for ultimately determining whether the BDCP is consistent with the Delta Plan has found that the BDCP EIR: should “Identify the water available for export and other beneficial uses under alternative flow criteria considered in the draft EIR/S” (Letter p. 1), “The benefits of tidal marsh restoration to Delta smelt are likely overstated” (p. 2), “Water quality impacts are compared to SWRCB water quality objectives with little regard to specific water quality needs of aquatic species of concern” (Id.), “San Francisco Bay should be included in the scope of the analysis, especially for water quality” (p. 12), and so forth.
This is a double attack on the truth and on informed public review of the proposed project. The BDCP agencies have refused, as shown above, to identify, develop, or consider in the Draft Plan and Draft EIR/EIS any alternatives that would reduce exports. At the same time, the agencies have also shut down the BDCP website to the posting of public comments and correspondence to prevent independent organizations and individuals from informing the public about alternatives and critical information that the exporters do not want the public to see.
The government agencies would not be blinding themselves and the public to alternatives reducing exports while at the same time  eliminating public comment and correspondence from the BDCP website if the agencies actually believed the BDCP proponents’ claims about the asserted benefits of the project. The silencing of comments on the BDCP website is powerful evidence that the BDCP proponents are afraid of the facts and the truth.
Friends of the River objects to approval of the BDCP and is in favor of reducing exports. That said, Friends of the River also believes in the American tradition of democracy and informed, indeed spirited, public debate of important and controversial issues. Because of that, we have been seeking and obtaining copies of BDCP comment letters under the Freedom of Information Act beginning in February 2014 and posting them on our website at   www.friendsoftheriver.org/bdcpcomments   . We have been posting all comment letters we have obtained regardless of whether the particular comments oppose or favor the Water Tunnels. The government agencies should be doing what we have been forced to do. That is the American way.

Misrepresenting Taking Water to be a “Conservation” Plan -
The only difference between the BDCP and this same Governor’s “peripheral canal” that was rejected by a 2-1 statewide referendum vote in June 1982 is that the project proponents, their lobbyists, their lawyers, and their supporters inside the government have come up with the clever trick of calling this a “conservation” plan. That trick is Orwellian. War is not “peace,” lies are not “truth,” and a new water diversion is not “conservation.” The same interests at work now succeeded in essentially destroying the San Joaquin River decades ago by constructing the Friant Dam and diverting most of the water south. As a result, a 60 mile stretch of this once mighty river is dry almost all of the time. Having succeeded in greatly reducing the flows from the south through the Delta, the same interests now seek to reduce the flows through the Delta from the Sacramento River in the north by approving and operating the Water Tunnels. The  Effects Analysis chapter (chapter 5) of the Draft Plan admits that the new upstream diversion would reduce flows but blames climate change as the most likely culprit for future salmon population extinctions. That chapter also claims that the adverse effects on listed species and habitats would be outweighed by various conservation measures having nothing to do with the Water Tunnels and that are to be paid for by the public rather than the exporters taking the water.
This massive new upstream diversion would include the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) tying their ESA hands behind their backs for 50 years by way of regulatory assurances and the “No Surprises Rule” included in the Implementing Agreement. The California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFA) would likewise give away its powers and responsibilities for the 50 year term of the proposed permit. In the face of admitted declining fish populations caused by water diversions and the admitted worsening future threats caused by climate change, this giveaway by the fishery agencies would be astonishing in its scope and its trampling on the fundamental ESA federal agency obligation “to afford first priority to the declared national policy of saving endangered species.” Tennessee Valley Authority v. Hill, 437 U.S. 153, 185 (1978). This proposed action if carried out would be so contrary to the language and purpose of the ESA as to raise the appearance of impropriety.
A function of ESA § 10 Habitat Conservation Plans is to allow private property owners to make economically viable use of their lands avoiding “Regulatory Takings” issues under the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution. Those issues could arise if such use would be prevented because of prohibitions against adversely affecting critical habitat for endangered species on the land owners’ property. No such issues are present here. The contractors do not own the water in the Sacramento River and the Delta. The water is a public resource. Even the permits for use of the water are held by the Federal and State governments— not the exporters.
The exporters also have nothing to do with proposed mitigation funding; mitigation would be paid for by way of bonds or other public funds. The public, meaning the taxpayers, would pay for the conservation measures as well as for attempting to mitigate adverse effects resulting from the new upstream conveyance with the exception of the project footprint itself. Habitat restoration on the ground is no substitute for taking away designated critical freshwater habitat. Consequently, there is no nexus between either the fish or the contractors and the BDCP mitigation and conservation measures.
Again, calling this a “conservation” plan is a clever trick. New upstream conveyance needs to be treated lawfully for what it really is-- a proposed new diversion project to take massive quantities of freshwater away from the lower Sacramento River, sloughs, and the San Francisco Bay-Delta. New upstream conveyance is not properly or lawfully a “conservation” plan or part of a lawful Habitat Conservation Plan.

Secret BDCP Planning with the Exporters and their Consultants -
There are references throughout the BDCP Drafts including the “Effects Analysis” chapter  of the Plan to the meetings with federal agency scientists “during the August 2013 workshops.” (Example, Plan ch. 5, p. 5. 1-32). There have been negotiations and meetings by the agencies with the exporters--the “water takers” -- who have had the seats that count on the inside of the process. Those interests are the “winners” in the BDCP processes. The ignored “water givers”-- the fish, the River, the Delta, Delta and Northern California agriculture, fishing, business, recreation and public interests have been excluded from the inside process.
The federal agencies are apparently trying to cover up issues that should have been resolved before the public Draft BDCP document review period commenced. These issues are instead being secretly planned to be decided in the Final BDCP Plan and EIR/EIS without being aired in new Draft documents and a new public review period. The close of the BDCP comment period in a few days affords time to only mention several examples since the subject documents were just obtained from the federal agencies under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). These examples come from something called the “BDCP Federal Open Issues Tracker:”

[begin excerpts]
“OPEN” ISSUES THAT WILL REQUIRE FURTHER REFINEMENTS BETWEEN DRAFT AND FINAL -
1.     ISSUES WITH CM 1 OPERATIONS

1.      Real Time Operations
a.      STATUS: Further work is needed on four issues: . . ; 2) whether the High Outflow Scenario (HOS) draws from Oroville only or whether other COA [Coordinated Operations Agreement] “adjustments” will occur; 3) whether water transfer programs are part of meeting the HOS requirements, and if so, how to address their NEPA/CEQA-related effects; . . .

2.     High Outflow Scenario (HOS) and Decision Tree
a.      STATUS: At present only the HOS appears to be permissible based upon the best available science. The Services will only authorize operations that meet permit issuance criteria. The State’s proposed project may therefore need to be changed at the time of permit issuance.
b.     The Plan needs to more clearly and specifically state the scientific work related to HOS/Decision Tree that will be carried out prior to operations with respect to salmonids.

4 . CVP Upstream Operations.
a. STATUS: Recent refinements to real-time operations state that meeting BDCP exports will require an (unspecified) accounting between the CVP and the State project. This accounting needs to be clarified and agreed upon.
b. This change raises several fundamental issues of project operations and Project impacts and it may trigger additional NEPA/CEQA analyses. This change may also affect the scope and timing of the ESA section 7 consultations associated with the BDCP.
[end excerpts]

These are just a few examples of critical issues that are being dealt with in secret with the project proponents being at the table while the public is relegated to trying to find out what is going on behind closed doors by Freedom of Information Act requests. The Effects Analysis chapter in the Plan represents over and over that the “only” changes in upstream operations will involve Oroville and the Feather River.  It turns out that is not the case. Other upstream reservoir operations and upstream reaches of other rivers will also be affected. These critical issues of “adjustments” to other reservoir operations, water transfers, salmon survival questions, and change between the CVP and State project need to be aired openly in a new Draft Plan and Draft EIR/EIS circulated for a new public review and comment period. That is necessary to allow the public to have the opportunity to comment on the actual project as it is and will be as opposed to finding out those critical details after the horse is out of the barn and the public comment period is over.

The Deception and Delusion in the BDCP -
“[A]cross the globe, large infrastructure projects almost invariably arrive late, over-budget and fail to perform up to expectations. Cost overruns and benefit shortfalls of 50% are common; cost overruns above 100% are not uncommon.” Flyvbjerg, Garbuio and Lovallo, Delusion and Deception in Large Infrastructure Projects, 51 California Management Review 170, 171-2 (winter 2009).  “The underlying reasons for all forecasting errors can usefully be grouped into three categories: delusions or honest mistakes; deceptions or strategic manipulation of information or processes; or bad luck.” (Id. at 172). [P]oliticians, planners, or project champions deliberately and strategically overestimate benefits and underestimate costs in order to increase the likelihood that their projects, and not their competition’s, gain approval and funding. These actors purposefully spin scenarios of success and gloss over the potential for failure.” (Id. at 173).
Large California infrastructure project proponents are masters of delusion and deception as evidenced by the explosion of the forecasted cost of the new San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge span from $1 billion to $6 billion.
Here, the BDCP project proponents are striving to be the all-time champions of carrying out “delusion and deception in large infrastructure projects.”  The only true statewide benefit-cost study of the proposed Water Tunnels project conducted so far concluded two years ago that “We find the tunnels are not economically justified because the costs of the tunnels are roughly 2.5 times larger than their benefits.” Eberhardt School of Business, Business Forecasting Center, University of the Pacific, Benefit-Cost Analysis of Delta Water Conveyance Tunnels (July 12, 2012). “The recent recession is a powerful reminder that no amount of financial engineering can change the fundamental economics of an investment from bad to good.” (Id. at 13).” [I]t is clear that the Delta water conveyance tunnels proposed in the draft BDCP are not justified on an economic or financial basis.” (Id.).  This helps explain the absence of information in the Draft Implementing Agreement about who is going to pay for what as well as the ongoing efforts of the exporters to quietly shift as many of the billions of dollars of costs as possible to taxpayers and to urban and suburban ratepayers.
Again, the deliberate omission of any alternative reducing exports and not including new upstream conveyance,  coupled with the refusal to post correspondence and comments on the BDCP website, aids and abets the deception of the public with respect to the environmental, economic, and financial risks and drawbacks of the Water Tunnels.
Finally, what could be more deceptive or delusional than falsely claiming or actually believing that taking more water away from the fish and their habitats will be good for them and is “conservation?”

The Adaptive Management and Decision Tree Bad Jokes on the Public -
Over and over again throughout the Draft Plan, Draft EIR/EIS and Draft Implementing Agreement adaptive management and the decision tree are referred to as the future procedures that will save the fish from all of the claimed “uncertainties” in the BDCP. If the exporters have the money, political power and influence to get the controversial Water Tunnels approved now, that would evidence the worthlessness of adaptive management and the “decision tree” in the future. Now, the billions of dollars to build the Water Tunnels have not been spent. After that investment is made and the Water Tunnels have been constructed and are ready for operation adaptive management and the decision tree will be puppets dancing to the tunes played by the exporters. The exporters would then have an additional argument for their lobbyists and lawyers to make-- that the exporters invested billions of dollars in the development of the Water Tunnels and cannot equitably be stopped from filling them with water. The same powerful interests that succeeded in destroying the once mighty San Joaquin River will not hesitate to turn the Delta into a salty, polluted, stagnant pond.
The exporters have already had sufficient control over the BDCP agencies to prevent the development and consideration of a BDCP reduced exports no new conveyance alternative. The exporters have had sufficient control over the BDCP agencies to exclude public comments and correspondence from the BDCP website. Given that successful track record of power and domination over the BDCP agencies, the so-called adaptive management and the decision tree will be no safeguards at all against the extirpation of listed fish species and the destruction of the Delta.

Corrective Actions -
The BDCP agencies will eventually have the opportunity, should they choose to steam full speed ahead in the face of red flags flying, to convince the courts that they proceeded in the manner required by NEPA, CEQA and the ESA. That is, the agencies can try to convince the courts that they really did not have to develop and consider a range of reasonable alternatives reducing exports; it was okay to suppress public comments and correspondence from the BDCP website; it was okay to misrepresent a new water diversion as a “conservation” plan; and it is okay to make significant changes or “adjustments” in proposed project operations without disclosing and assessing those changes and adjustments in a new Draft Plan and Draft EIR/EIS.
The BDCP agencies have the opportunity to instead take a different path. That is, the agencies can present a range of reasonable alternatives reducing exports in a new Draft Plan, Draft EIR/EIS and Draft Implementing Agreement. The agencies can welcome instead of ban public comment and correspondence on the BDCP website during a new public review period on new draft BDCP documents. The agencies can take the proposed new conveyance out of the Habitat Conservation Plan and deal with any such proposal in the normal, lawful project review process. The agencies can make sure that significant changes or “adjustments” in proposed project operations are disclosed in Draft environmental documents out for public review periods rather than attempting to unlawfully insert them in Final NEPA and CEQA documents to evade public review and comment. And there is so much more the agencies can, indeed must, do to represent the public as opposed to only representing the water takers. The agencies can require ESA consultations and California public trust doctrine analysis to take place before rather than after the BDCP Draft NEPA and CEQA processes so that the public can actually be informed by the work of agency scientists as opposed to attempting to wade through thousands of pages of financially-interested project proponent advocacy.  The agencies can either finally admit that the costs of the Water Tunnels would be 2.5 times larger than the benefits or require their own statewide benefit-cost study to be performed comparing the Water Tunnels with reduced export alternatives.

CONCLUSION -
The fish and the Delta are in peril. Extinction is forever. The 40,000 pages of BDCP project proponent advocacy are unworthy of the epic decisions to be made guiding the future of the fish, northern California Rivers, and the Delta. If this is not worth the environmental full disclosure required by law and the NEPA, CEQA and ESA required do-over, what is?

Monopolists in Agriculture say NO to responsible groundwater management, and YES to tax-funded dam building

"Does anybody check the numbers?"
2014-07-25 from "River Currents" column by Ron Sorok:
A few weeks back, I got a call from a local TV news station asking me to comment on a state Farm Bureau news release. It was a curious press release. In a nutshell, it blasted the state for even considering groundwater management legislation. Instead, we were told that we just needed to build more dams.
Well, it certainly is understandable that the Farm Bureau has some intense feelings about this. After all, most of the groundwater mining in California is done by agriculture. Groundwater management, ideally, tries to make groundwater use sustainable---and in the long run using more groundwater than is being recharged is not sustainable.
But even more important was the implication of the press release that if we only could build more dams we would not have to worry about keeping groundwater use sustainable.
Well, the USGS reports that 150 cubic kilometers of water have been evacuated from California’s groundwater basins over the past 160 years. In California’s San Joaquin Valley alone, the long-term groundwater overdraft is 2-million acre-feet per year and accelerating in California’s unregulated environment. The USGS thinks it might be twice that number.
We’ve also got some agency numbers about the yield (“new” water developed) from all the new or expanded dams that Congress might authorize and might be funded in the upcoming multibillion dollar water bond: it amounts to only 10% of the USGS San Joaquin Valley groundwater-overdraft estimate and 1% of the existing water use in the state.
A 10% groundwater solution for just one region in California. And who in their right mind thinks that this overdrafting farming region will get a significant share of the water from these proposed deadbeat dams costing almost 9 billion dollars. Your guess is right, not much under the beneficiary-pays principle.
And to put the costs into perspective, the Federal Central Valley Project delivers about eight million acre-feet of water in a typical year. Farmers, a few cities, and a few power users are still paying for this project. What do they still owe? About two-billion dollars. And they complain about their water and power bills now.
So somebody over at the Farm Bureau can’t do math very well.
Of course some of our state and national leaders can’t do math well either. The math challenged just might think that we can avoid responsible use of the state’s groundwater---its best drought reserve---by building more expensive, low-yield dams on California rivers. But we shouldn’t let them do it. The numbers don’t lie.
And rivers matter too.