Jerry Brown wants to destroy the Sacramento Delta

Jerry Brown wants to destroy the Delta and farmers.
Chuck Baker stands before the Baker Ranch, a 30-acre pear orchard and family heirloom on Sutter Island in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta. The ranch has been in the Baker family for nearly 150 years. Photo: (McClatchy-Tribune News Service / SF)

Jerry Brown rapes the Sacramento Delta
"I'm not willing to sacrifice my land for somebody growing cotton in the desert."   - - - Chuck Baker, Delta Farmer

• Brown's water tunnel will destroy the environment in a corrupt pay-off to giant agri-business and the construction companies and union labor that would build it.
• Brown insanely says taking water away from the Delta helps the Delta grow stronger.

The San Francisco Chronicle did a wonderful story about Delta Farmer Chuck Baker and how Jerry Brown's insane water tunnel plan would destroy a great treasure of California.

The vast delta of the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers, where Chuck Baker's family has lived and farmed since the 1850s, has long been the center of California's chronic water conflicts. It is the switchyard of the state's water, the place where the north's liquid riches are shipped to the irrigation ditches of the San Joaquin Valley and the sinks of Southland suburbs.

Now the delta has become the defiant seat of rebellion against the most ambitious water supply project proposed in California in decades, a multibillion-dollar plan that has the backing of the administrations of Democrats Comrade-Governor Jerry Brown and Comrade-President Obama, as well as the state's most powerful irrigation and urban water districts.
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Delta landowners have refused to grant access to state crews doing preliminary soil testing for the project. They have demonstrated against the proposal in Sacramento, pitchforks in hand. They have organized a vocal coalition that has produced a documentary film - airing at public forums around the state - to drum up support for their cause.

The proposal calls for the construction of two 35-mile-long tunnels that would carry water underground from intakes on the Sacramento River a few miles north of here to the giant pumps that fill southbound aqueducts.


Jerry Brown's insane Sacramento Delta Tunnel

The government pumping operations currently suck supplies entirely from the south delta, a practice that plays havoc with the tidal estuary's natural salinity and flow patterns, creating a hospitable environment for invasive plants and fish. So powerful are the pumps that they reverse the flow of some delta channels, confusing native fish and drawing them to their deaths.
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But delta farmers want none of it. They fear the restoration efforts will cost them portions of their land. They worry that their irrigation water will grow saltier, hurting crops, as fresh Sacramento River water that has always flowed through the delta is instead diverted beneath it.

Opponents, including a number of conservation groups, warn that migrating salmon will run afoul of the massive river intakes. They argue that the big tunnels will inevitably be used to send more water south, robbing the delta ecosystem of needed flows.


Kill the Canal
The march to build a system to move massive amounts of water around the Delta continues. The goal is to build a peripheral canal (also referred to as a tunnel or conveyance) so that fresh water will be available to meet the seemingly never-ending needs of big agriculture and Southern California real estate interests.

"It's really taking away from one place and giving to another," said Baker, 28, a UC Davis graduate in fish and conservation biology who does related consulting work.
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Used to be, you could catch 20- to 30-pound fish in the slough that flows by his property and irrigates his 4,300 pear trees, Chuck Baker said. Tons of salmon migrated through the delta. "As they increased the pumping, the fish population went like this," he said, pointing downward.

He bristles at the notion that he might lose land along the slough to restoration efforts - intended to aid the recovery of imperiled fish - that would sustain or even increase water exports to the San Joaquin Valley.

"I'm not willing to sacrifice my land for somebody growing cotton in the desert," he declared, referring to a major crop grown in the Westlands Water District.


Read more:   San Francisco Chronicle

Just Say No to Democrat Delta Rape
Democrat Jerry Brown wants to send millions of gallons of water from the beautiful Sacramento Delta to Central and Southern California to grow cotton and water Golf courses.