Letter: Kafka and Orwell "would both blush" at Delta stakeholder engagement

The State Water Contractors, through the Delta Conveyance Design and Construction Authority (“DCA”), have been running the stakeholder engagement process for the Delta tunnel project. Karen Mann, the South Delta Business member of the DCA’s Stakeholder Engagement Committee, wrote a searingly critical letter about the Committee process. The letter states:

I recently saw a letter from Angelica Whaley, dated September 23, 2020, taking issue with the failure of the SEC to give any real consideration to the concerns of Delta Stakeholders so far.

I agree that this committee has not meaningfully addressed any of the concerns of Delta Stakeholders. We have been strangled by your rules that do not allow us to talk about the things that are really important to us and then barraged with a mass of hyper-technical details about tunnel construction that we are asked to comment on. 

I think it is fair to say that 80% of the materials presented to the Stakeholder Committee by the construction engineers are not well understood by committee members, thus further limiting any comment to minor items such as the location of a particular access shaft or barge landing because this kind of item is really the only thing that is presented in a way that is understandable by a layperson. 

Franz Kafka and George Orwell would both blush at the masterful barrage of bureaucratic mind control deployed by the DCA, as reflected in the glossy reports and minutes produced by you. Make no mistake, we understand that the purpose of these materials is to mislead Governor Newsom and ultimately the courts into thinking you have meaningfully engaged with Delta stakeholders when you have not. 

Back in 2019, when DWR abandoned California Waterfix, DWR Director Nemeth issued a series of proclamations regarding the  single-tunnel  project promising that the "Newsom administration wants to engage with Delta communities to hear their ideas and concerns." This Committee is supposed to carry that out.

But you have not allowed us to speak our ideas and concerns at all. Instead, you tell us that anything we want to discuss is part of the CEQA process and not to be discussed at these meetings. So where is the Newsom Administration's effort to engage with Delta communities to hear their ideas and concerns? It doesn't exist.

Read the rest of Karen Mann’s letter to the DCA here. Karen Mann is President of Save the California Delta Alliance.