Thursday of this week, Restore the Delta (with legal support from Earthjustice) presented their case against the permit request for the Delta Tunnels before the State Water Resources Control Board.

Here are the main claims made against the permit petition for the Delta Tunnels:
* The Delta Tunnels represent a new water right, not a mere change to existing water rights permits of the State Water Project and Central Valley Project.

* The Petitioners have failed to demonstrate the project would not injure Delta water right holders and other legal beneficial users of water in the Delta due to salinity degradation on Delta agricultural output and employment.

* The Petitioners have failed to demonstrate that the Delta Tunnels would not degrade flows and water quality, and thus would not harm the environmental justice communities of the Delta region.

* The Petitioners fail to show that degradation of drinking water quality and resulting increased treatment costs, degradation of agricultural irrigation water quality, and increased contamination of fish consumed by residents would not occur.

* The Petitioners have failed to adequately provide public outreach to the Delta’s environmental justice communities and to survey their interests as legal users of water and that they would not bear a disproportionate burden from effects of the Delta Tunnels.

Read the full Opening Statement here.

Restore the Delta is the Stockton-based grassroots campaign that has worked since 2006 in the areas of public education and outreach and has grown to 40,000 members from throughout California. Our mission is to save the San Francisco Bay-Delta estuary for our children and future generations.