Dear Felicia: Your plan will hurt mountain counties, too

Dear Chairwoman Felicia Marcus:

The State Water Resources Control Board is slated for a Nov. 7 vote on a Bay-Delta Water Quality Plan which would require 40 percent of unimpaired flows to remain in the rivers to purportedly revive chinook salmon through the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta.

If the Board adopts the proposed Plan, it is with little to no regard for the impacts on the ecosystem of mountain counties and impacts on endangered aquatic plant and animal species, including endemic and migrating species that are already stressed by forest fires and drought. The board’s plan will penalize rural disadvantaged communities in California’s 16 mountain counties, increase fire-prone vegetation, exacerbate tree mortality, increase the risk of catastrophic fire in the Wildland Urban Interface, degrade air quality, increase ground temperature and further degrade the overall health of the Sierra Nevada environment.