The Delta and its tributaries need your help Now!
We need help in the fight to keep the delta, its tributary Rivers and their fisheries from being destroyed as we know them.!! We have a critically important opportunity to affect California’s water future. As many of you may already know, through the proposed "South Delta Improvement Project" or "SDIP", The California Department of Water Resources, in cooperation with the Bureau of Reclamation, is attempting to vastly increase pumping from the devastated San Francisco Bay Delta to the south, to include increased water deliveries to Westlands Water District, beneficiary of Trinity water, among others. If we want our fishery resources saved from near extinction, pumping from the Bay Delta south should be reduced, not increased.The state has issued a draft Environmental Impact Report upon which we urgently ask that you comment.
Please use these post cards to comment and better yet write an original letter too! This "grand scheme" affects virtually every drop of water in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Drainages, The Trinity River and potentially the rest of the North Coast rivers.
As part of the allied fishing group's effort to stop the further export of water from the delta, a system that is already on the verge of collapse, the Bay Delta Committee of the Northern California Council of the Federation of Fly Fishers has printed up post cards with a message to The Department of Water Resources, The Governor and to the Director of the Department of Fish and Game. We are asking them to pull the plug on this outrageous proposal.
This is a critical issue that adversely will affect allocation of California’s developed water resources for at least the next fifty years, if not eternity. Please take the time to follow through on this request to comment.
We need people that are willing to take as many post cards as possible to the upcoming Sportsman Expo's and the Fred Hall Show this weekend. We need some folks that are willing to spend a couple of hours of their time at the shows passing out the card to the sympathetic vendors booths and explaining what the cards are for and ask for help from them in getting cards signed by folks that will mail them to the recipients. Easy work and the reward will be great! We need enough people to cover the shows each day they're on..The Cow Palace this week end, San Mateo the 12th-15th, The Sacramento Show on the 19th-22nd and if anyone in Southern Calif. can work the L.A. show Feb. 17th-19th.
E-mail me at stripermike@earthlink.net with your contact info and we'll sign you up! BTW..This invitations is extended to any of you that are participants in the events as we are sure that you folks will need a little break now and then during which you can convince a lot of folks just how badly we need to stop the SDIP!
For those that are willing to help with this projct once we have your contact info we can arrange for you to either pick the cards up of we will ship them to you..Even overnite them for the Cow Palace this week...
Victory for the fisheries or defeat depends on you folks!!
In the trenches,
Mike
P.S. Here's the text of the post card to the DWR...
Dear Mr. Marshall:
I oppose the actions proposed in the draft EIR/EIS for SDIP. SDIP is another attempt to appropriate additional water from the already-compromised Bay-Delta
Estuary. The dredging, barriers, and eventual increased pumping and water exports of SDIP will only worsen the Delta Ecosystem Crash (aka Pelagic Organism
Decline). Instead of the measures you propose, measures that will benefit special interests such as Westlands Water District, I request the following: Withdraw the
EIR/EIS. Reduce pumping rates and water exports to those that existed in the early 2000s when Delta Smelt appeared to be on the road to recovery. Increase ecosystem
restoration measures. Improve water quality. Ensure the ecosystem of the Bay-Delta Estuary, including its fishery resources, is restored and self-sustaining before you consider appropriating more of its lifeblood (water). As California's Water Plan demonstrates, our needs will be met for several more decades through reclamation, conservation, efficiency, and conjunctive use.
Signed __________________________________________________ __________
Printed __________________________________________________ __________
Address __________________________________________________ _________
.
