Franks Resto | Initial plan blocked False and Sacramento rivers for Bethel Island and Franks Tract

[WB Staff]

Initial plan blocked False and Sacramento rivers for Bethel Island and Franks Tract

Faced with mounting opposition over a $315 million plan to restore the tidal marshland on Franks Tract in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, state officials have begun to seek input from residents, boaters, fishermen and others on alternatives.

To that end, officials from the project’s lead agency, California Department of Fish and Wildlife, along with the state Department of Water Resources, East Bay Parks and Recreation, consultants and others spent most of the day on Thursday speaking with an overflowing crowd of concerned residents on nearby Bethel Island about the project’s goals and alternative approaches to restoration.

“You are the project,” consultant John Bourgeois of Environmental Science Associates, told the audience. “… We have a broad level of technical expertise that can be brought to bear once we get some consensus on what potential alternatives could look like.”

Over the past several years, the CDFW has been studying ways to restore part of the 3,523-acre state park to its original marshland in the hopes of reducing saltwater intrusion into the Delta, along with cutting back on submerged aquatic weeds and invasive nonnative fish that feed on native fish such as the endangered Delta smelt and Chinook salmon. An initial study in 2017 included plans to split the submerged island into two with a berm to create a thousand acres of wetlands, but that would have permanently blocked access to False and Sacramento rivers from Bethel Island and Franks Tract.

Read the rest at East Bay Times: https://www.eastbaytimes.com/2019/07/12 ... storation/

[mark poulson]

Guys,
It's pretty simple.
To reduce saltwater intrusion, pump out less water.
To protect the smelt and salmon, pump out less water.
To cut back on aquatic weeds AND to be able to cut down on the amount of deadly chemical herbicides now used to control them, pump less water. Slower current dilute the chemicals less, so they will be more effective in smaller amounts.
If you don't believe me, ask the DFW.

I am no fisheries biologist, or marine biologist, but it doesn't take a rocket scientist to see how the drop in salmon and smelt populations began when water began to be pumped south, and accelerated with the increase in pumping.
The vast majority of water pumped south goes to agricultural water districts ( basically a 80/20 split between agriculture and urban drinking water), and those farmers are planting more and more acres of water intensive crops FOR EXPORT. It's not like they're feeding us, unless we live on almonds and alfalfa.
If they were trying to farm in any other desert country, like Israel, they'd be forced to farm crops that didn't use as much water, and to use less wasteful irrigation techniques.
Why can't that be done here?
Grow sustainable crops, and stop making a profit off of the public's natural resource that is the CA Delta at the expense of the Delta and it's ecosystem.
This is just common sense.
You shouldn't need a retired carpenter to tell you how to do your job, but sure looks like someone needs to.

[george]

How dare you throw logic and common sense into the mix? Forty years ago we had one twentieth of the mid valley in crop production due to it being desert and getting very little rainfall to make it profitable. Now we have hundreds of thousands of acres of that we set in production of nuts to which 90% of that production is shipped overseas and most to countries who dont like us! We are shipping 80% more of that water to the lower state which up until recently was growing by thousands of new users daily and all this water profiting by big water districts and corps! We need to build reservoirs in central and southern California and store excess water on flood years. This water should be owned by the taxpaying public and sold with profits going to keeping the Lakes and rivers healthy and managing these systems. All water in all reservoirs should be 100% accessible by all citizens 100% of the time for recreation and fishing day and night!

[mark poulson]

How dare you throw logic and common sense into the mix? Forty years ago we had one twentieth of the mid valley in crop production due to it being desert and getting very little rainfall to make it profitable. Now we have hundreds of thousands of acres of that we set in production of nuts to which 90% of that production is shipped overseas and most to countries who dont like us! We are shipping 80% more of that water to the lower state which up until recently was growing by thousands of new users daily and all this water profiting by big water districts and corps! We need to build reservoirs in central and southern California and store excess water on flood years. This water should be owned by the taxpaying public and sold with profits going to keeping the Lakes and rivers healthy and managing these systems. All water in all reservoirs should be 100% accessible by all citizens 100% of the time for recreation and fishing day and night!

Amen!