My apologies, folks. I stand corrected. Although there are some differing counts on the exact number of pages of the Bay Delta Conservation Plan documents – is it 40,115 or 40,214? – it appears the figure of 283 pages per day that I used to calculate the number of days is too low. Yes, sorry, you read that right. Too low.
You actually need to be reading 334.2 to 335.1 pages per day, if you’re planning on reading the entire document. The public comment period’s been open for a week, so using the lower number of 334.2 pages just to soften the blow somewhat, it means you should have read 2339.4 pages by now!
I’ll break it down even further. In case you were curious, at 334.2 pages per day, if you read for 8 hours, that’s only 41.8 pages per hour, or about 2/3rds of a page per minute, if you want to get down to the granular detail. Feel better?
Now, I’m told the plan has 8,992 pages, so if you’re only planning on reading only the plan itself, that’s just 74.9 pages per day; by end of day today, you should be on page 524. If you’re only going to read the EIR, then its 259.3 pages per day for you, so by end of day to day, you should have visually consumed 1815.1 pages.
However, if you only intend to read the entire document but only on working days,well, there are 85 of those, says the Environmental Water Caucus. I’ll take their word for it, which means in that case you need to be devouring 471.9 pages per day.
Perhaps not surprisingly, the Environmental Water Caucus has sent another letter, requesting more time. (Here is their letter: EWC Time Extension Request) They would like the review period to extend for 240 days, or out to August 15, 2014. If their plea is successful, you could slow down to a more leisurely pace of just 167.1 pages per day.
Of course, if you want to have time to prepare and submit comments, you’ll have to pick up it up a little. And I never take a day off, so I assume you’re not going to, either. Christmas, New Years, Martin Luther King Day – every day you’ll be reading those 334.2 pages …
I’ll issue periodic updates, just to be helpful and keep you on track. 
So what page are you at?
BDCP Road Map update: I have to confess, the reason why I don’t know the exact number myself is that I haven’t started the BDCP Road Map. I’ve had some other things to clear off my desk first. So while y’all are reading the documents over the holidays, I’ll be slicing, dicing, extracting and jpeg’ing a new road map to be unveiled after the first of the year for those of you who’d rather spend the holidays doing something else rather than picking through 40,000 pages of downloads …
