Thread by @RestoretheDelta

Yesterday the @DeltaCouncil voted to prioritize a levee investment strategy that prioritizes water exports over protecting human life with the promise of re-evaluating the plan later on. This is not good enough!

Around 50% of the residents in North Delta Legacy towns are people of color; the poverty rate reaches up to 30% in some places. This is a significant environmental justice community.

Environmental justice communities do not recover from flood. We have a similar problem in Stockton where the Army Corps of Engineers has underfunded levee upgrades that are needed in South Stockton where there is a large population (different planning track).

With sea level rise, storm surge and higher river flows anticipated in the years to come, and lack of concern for equity, the @DeltaCouncil is failing to exemplify the values toward the environment and justice that Californians embrace.

We are calling on @CAgovernor @GavinNewsom and @calnatresources to rethink what the DSC has done. This vote does not match the values you are rightfully articulating to Californians.

As documented by the @CA_DPC in their Economic Sustainability Plan, if we have a flood event, people in the Delta will experience 100% of the loss of life and 80% of the financial loss. Water exporters will experience 20% of the economic loss.

Yet it is now policy of the State of California to fund levees for water transfers first and to protect human life second. This is a dangerous precedent for a state entity to be setting. We aren’t taking about protecting every corn field, but about protecting thousands of people.

Is this how we are going to plan as a state for the impacts of climate change? And @DeltaCouncil when is the re-evaluation of the DLIS going to begin? We have a suggestion. Today is a good day to start reversing this bad faith decision made by the Council.

Last, how does this decision bolster faith that communities would be protected from flood during conveyance construction? #WalkTheTalk @DeltaCouncil