Pacific economist willing to bet $10,000 study on peripheral canal is wrong

From Stockton’s Record:

Jeffrey Michael didn’t step, wade or even leap into the state’s water wars. He made a cannonball splash. The 38-year-old University of the Pacific economist wrote a biting critique of a major study that recommended a peripheral canal to solve the Delta’s problems.

Michael moved here nine months ago from Maryland. He’s driven through the Delta once. He wasn’t around for decades of arguments for and against a canal. “When I started reading this (study), my assumption was that these academic experts are right and these water war veterans have an ax to grind,” he said. Closer calculations, however, turned up serious errors in the study by the Public Policy Institute of California, he said.

In that widely anticipated report, the PPIC found that while ending exports from the Delta would be best for the environment, it would be far more expensive than constructing a canal. The report was one source considered by a governor-appointed task force that later concluded that at least some kind of canal is necessary.

Michael, who presented his findings to local water officials last week, says the PPIC overestimated the state’s future population and the cost of alternative water sources that could help make up for the water that would be lost should the giant export pumps near Tracy grind to a halt.

Ultimately, the cost of ending exports and building a canal may be a wash, Michael said. And in that case, the environment should win out. Ending exports would be the way to go.

Read more from the Stockton Record by clicking here.

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