On August 2, 2011, the Delta Stewardship Council released the 5th Draft of the Delta Plan (225 pages plus 243 pages of appendices—not to mention the summary or cover letter, 4th Draft Plan 180 pages, etc.). This draft is intended to be the basis for the Environmental Impact Report (EIR) that will be released later this month. [Comments on the 5th Draft are due by September 26, 2011].
This release came right on the heels of the California Dept. of Fish and Game’s release of the draft Conservation Strategy for Restoration of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta Ecological Management Zone and the Sacramento and San Joaquin Valley Regions (341 pages).
Over the years, I feel confident in estimating the number of pages dedicated to the California Bay-Delta has exceeded 1 Million. In my personal experience, many of these pages are duplicative, redundant and say the same thing. (haha).
Hopefully, the destruction of trees has been worth it, but, in the end I have a feeling we will say that the layers of bureaucracy created in the efforts to save the Delta left us unable to see the forest for the trees.
