Your views: It is time to implement the Bay-Delta Water Quality Control Plan

In a recent CalMatters commentary, Jennifer Pierre general manager of the State Water Contractors and David Guy, president of the Northern California Water Association claim “a broad coalition of interests stand in support of the Newsom administration’s call for bold actions that replace contentious, drawn-out regulatory alternatives in favor of a science-based approach that provides more flexible, adaptive operations based on real-time conditions.”

We disagree.

People who live in the Delta believe Newsom’s proposed “Voluntary Agreements” will fail the Delta, as so many grand schemes have in the past. The condition of the Delta is just getting worse as toxic green algal blooms at the Stockton waterfront and throughout the Delta expand.

Lack of water flows are killing the Delta. The solution is clear; fish and people need water.

But the process that created those voluntary agreements has excluded most of the parties affected by declining Bay-Delta conditions. It is not a credible effort to respond to the ecosystem crisis in the vast  Bay-Delta ecosystem or California’s long history of inequitable water policies. After more than a decade of water users promises of a Bay-Delta agreement, it is clear that the VA effort has failed.

Newsom’s voluntary agreements represent little more than an effort to delay action by the State Board to improve conditions in the Bay-Delta and Central Valley Rivers. It is time for the State Board to finish updating and implementing the Bay-Delta Water Quality Control Plan.

Barbara Barrigan-Parrilla, Restore the Delta and Malissa Tayaba, Shingle Springs Band of Miwok Indians.

This article originally appeared on The Record: Lack of water flows for the Delta draw public comment