(Added by California Cornerstone)
October 22, 2013
To the Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors
Sitting as the Santa Barbara Flood and Water Conservation District
Fellow Citizens and Residents of California,
I am a geotechnical, earthquake and water resources engineer who lives in the Bay Area
but who has often visited Santa Barbara and has worked on projects in the surrounding
area, including, for better or worse, Platforms Grace and Gilda. While projects like
offshore platforms and dams obviously require a team effort, I note that I personally
made key design decisions on both Warm Springs Dam and Sevenoaks Dam, two of the
handful of dams that have been built in California during the 40 years that I have lived
here. Sevenoaks Dam lies between the north and south traces of the San Andreas fault
and, amongst other things, provides flood control benefits for a million people who live
on the floodplain of the Santa Ana River. You might assume from this background that I
became a civil engineer because I like building things, and that is still true, but I only
like building things that make engineering, economic and environmental sense.
Building infrastructure projects to cement a politician’s legacy does not qualify as a
legitimate reason for building them.
The twin tunnels of the Bay Delta Conservation Plan (BDCP) qualify as a project that
makes no engineering, economic or environmental sense. In order to explain this as
briefly as possible without going over the entire tortuous history of the Peripheral Canal,
I will use as my starting point an article written by Matt Weiser in his continuing series
on the Bay Delta Conservation Plan that was published in the Sacramento Bee on
Sunday September 22, which provided the proponents of the BDCP an opportunity to
make their case for the BDCP as a whole and for constructing the twin tunnels following
several articles by Matt which strongly suggested that the BDCP will damage or even
destroy the Delta. However, if the arguments advanced by my friends Jason Peltier and
Roger Patterson are the best that they can do, they would be advised to urge their bosses
at the Westlands Water District and the Metropolitan Water District to more seriously
consider alternative solutions.
The BDCP has five Achilles heels, enough to cripple at least two and a half men, let alone
Jason and Roger:
(1) Even the BDCP’s own consultants admit that the degradation of Delta water quality
cannot be addressed given the current preferred alternative. While, on the basis of past
performance it is impossible to predict the actions of the State Water Resources Control
Board, it seems unlikely that they will agree to improving export water quality at the
expense of Delta water quality.
(2) As confirmed by the report released recently by American Rivers and The Nature
Conservancy, the BDCP has yet to produce a legitimate effects analysis that could
provide the basis for granting incidental take permits;
(3) Roger may claim that the economics of the BDCP are “very sound” but the truth is
that that is very dubious. The $10 billion required for habitat restoration as part of the
plan is currently unfunded, and Dr Rod Smith, who analyzes investments in projects like
the twin tunnels for a living, says that he would likely not advise the individual water
districts to fund the BDCP, although he thinks that South of Delta storage might be a
viable investment.
(4) The threat of earthquakes and megastorms to the Delta levee system, often cited as
the principal justification for constructing the twin tunnels, is way overstated. As an
example, the balance of Matt Weiser’s article was thrown off by just one misstatement:
“the U.S. Geological Survey has estimated that, by 2050, there is a 60 percent chance of
an earthquake occurring that is large enough to flood multiple islands.” In a more
recent interview with the River News Herald, Nancy Vogel, spokesperson for the BDCP,
said “according to the USGS, within the next 25 years there is an 80 percent chance that
10 islands within the Delta are going to flood due to ground motion. Neither of these
statements are true. The USGS has reasonably estimated that there is something like a
two-thirds chance of getting a large, approaching magnitude 7, earthquake in the Bay
Area in the next thirty years, or by 2050, but the Delta is not the Bay Area. The closest,
and likely the most active, fault in the Bay Area is the Hayward fault and that is 30 miles
from the western end of the Delta. The local earthquake sources within the Delta are
not well understood but they are both much less active and unlikely to produce a large
earthquake. The real probability of getting the kind of flooding due to earthquake
scenario that the DWR has studied likely lies between 0.1 and 0.01 percent per year.
Further, Matt Weiser’s own research, as reported in his article, indicated that the
consequences of widespread levee failures have been exaggerated. And, even if the scary
scenarios were valid, as noted in the article, the economic benefits resulting from
reduction of the alleged threat is really small. Put simply, it is time to stop talking about
the earthquake bogey and time to address the real issues of the Delta and California’s
water distribution system.
(5) Without a true “big gulp” capability and without vastly increased south of Delta
storage, the BDCP does not address the real possibility of seeing a six-year drought in
California. That is the most pressing need in California water management. Greatly
increased regional self-reliance will help mitigate this threat, but to the extent that the
State Water Project and the Central Valley Project can survive a six-year drought,
everyone would benefit. Users already complain about reductions in deliveries after two
or three years of drought but imagine what it will be like in the fifth and sixth years of a
drought. The BDCP does nothing to address this problem because the Metropolitan
Water District, which to their credit has accumulated significant storage in recent years,
is presently more concerned about water quality.
The fact that these five technical issues are still unresolved is an indication of the
current state of disarray of the BDCP. Secretary of Natural Resources John Laird has
made the fatuous claim that the current preferred alternative is the result of seven years
of study, but all those seven years of going around in circles has done is line the pockets
of numerous consultants. This circus has continued under the direction of Under
Secretary Jerry Meral, who is looking for a deal, not a solution. When Jerry Meral
continues to make promises at public meetings that he never delivers on, when Jason
Peltier and Roger Patterson, the spokespersons for the two largest water contractors
cannot come up with a persuasive defense of the current plan, and when Nancy Vogel
continues to spout nonsense about earthquakes, one has to question whether anything
of value has been achieved for the expenditure of $180 million dollars.
I have on occasion been brought in as a facilitator when engineering projects have
issues, and have had some success in that capacity, but in my judgment the BDCP
process is beyond salvation and to continue to fund it is just a waste of ratepayers
money. Such funds would be better spent advancing regional self-reliance and initiating
a new, more modest effort to study alternatives for addressing Statewide water
conveyance and ecosystem restoration issues that might actually work.
Sincerely,
Robert Pyke Ph.D.,G.E.
1310 Alma Avenue, No. 201, Walnut Creek, CA 94596
Telephone 925.323.7338 E-mail bobpyke@attglobal.net
As usual, Dr. Pyke's comments are spot on excellent!
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