In search of a permanent solution

In 1994, CALFED was formed to develop a long-term solution for the San Francisco Bay/Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta Estuary. However, recent developments in the CALFED process suggest no clear commitment to provide water quality and reliability benefits for urban California. Further, CALFED has announced that it may delay a formal decision on a process to provide these benefits for another seven years.

By plane, it can be seen in a few moments. By boat, it takes a lifetime to explore. Legal careers start and end with its continuous public policy disputes.

For most of two decades, Californians have squabbled over the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta's water.

Northerners accused the south of sucking the delta dry for lawns and swimming pools that they perceived are in every back yard. Southerners contended that a dependable supply of good quality water fuels Southland businesses, catapulting the state’s economy among the world’s top 10.

Southland water users conserve 480,000 acre-feet of water a year. The Mono Lake Committee recently reported that Metropolitan’s service area uses about the same amount of water it did 15 years ago despite a 30 percent population increase. Per capita water use in Sacramento is 271 gallons per day. In Oakland and other East Bay Area cities, it’s 171 gallons. Los Angelenos, though, use only 155 gallons a day. Additionally, Southern California annually produces 230,000 acre-feet of recycled water. Southern California conserves and recycles enough water each year to meet the total domestic water demands for the city of Los Angeles.

Critics suggest that delivery shortfalls can be made up through more intensive water conservation. Yet this short-sighted solution contains a major flaw — it overlooks the fact that higher salinity levels would make it more difficult for the Southland to continue and expand its water recycling programs. Currently Metropolitan uses delta water to lower the salinity of its Colorado River supply, enabling the Southland to continue the most ambitious water recycling programs in the country. As a water conservation measure, many crops are irrigated with recycled water. Plants irrigated with salty water often suffer leaf burn and lower crop yields than plants irrigated with low-salinity water. Curtailing the Southland’s ability to recycle water may well worsen the state’s water picture by forcing agencies that rely on recycling as part of their resource mix to depend more heavily on imported supplies.

Former Governor Pete Wilson once referred to the delta as “broken.” Fixes have been hard to come by. Farmers fought with city dwellers, cities with environmentalists and environmentalists with both, over who was putting the state’s water supply to its most beneficial use. None of the parties seemed willing to acknowledge the others’ efforts. Meanwhile, the delta continued to suffer as did water quality when saltwater from San Francisco Bay crept deeper into the heart of the estuary. Delta agricultural irrigation water was returned to the delta after it had picked up pesticides and organics — such as leaves, peat and bark. (Suspected carcinogens are formed when this high-in-organics water is treated with chlorine by municipal water districts.)

Then in December 1994 a strained peace came to the battle. A Bay/Delta Accord was signed between state and federal agencies with management responsibilities over the delta which appeared to signal a truce in the wars. Newspapers called it a landmark accord, declaring that peace had finally broken out in the state’s water wars. The accord, they wrote, represented the first coordinated steps to restore the fragile Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta ecosystem. CALFED, as the effort was named, was created in the summer of 1994 when 14 state and federal agencies signed a framework agreement for the purpose of working on three delta needs: develop water quality standards to protect the estuary, coordinate operations of the state and federal water projects, and develop a long-term solution for the delta.

Those with a stake in California’s water resources thought things were about to change. Or were they?

Although there had been rough spots in the discussions during the early years, most held out hope that a solution was possible and that the estuary could meet the needs of California’s growing cities, agriculture and those of the environment. While there was concern over the fragile nature of the truce binding Californian’s agricultural, environmental and urban communities together, most agreed that the delta’s decline could only be corrected with everyone working together to take action. CALFED is built upon the principle that a delta fix includes improvement on all fronts: the environment, water quality, water supply and protection from natural disasters. Over the last three years CALFED has assembled three alternatives infixng the delta, two of which include major structural changes.

After even more study and public hearings, the process once again seems to be staggering across the line to inaction. CALFED recently has announced that it may delay a formal decision about delta structural changes for another seven years, offering no clear commitment to Southern California to provide for water quality and reliability benefits.

The Delta: A study in transition

After the Florida Everglades, it is one of the largest masses of cultivated organic soil in the United States. Ancient Indian languages were spoken here once, when this land was wild.

As the largest river delta on the West Coast, the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta drains more than half of California's surface water. During an average year, 18 million acre-feet of rain and snowmelt flow through its tangle of rivers and sloughs. It stretches out over an area roughly the size of Rhode Island and contains about a half million acres of the most productive farmland in America. Fertile Central Valley farms are irrigated by nearly 4.5 million acre-feet of water pumped from the surrounding waterways while two out of every three Californians depend on the delta for their drinking water and their jobs.

It was a bridesmaid during the Gold Rush when the forefathers of some of today's residents washed mountains of dirt and silt down its rivers searching for that fleck of wealth.

The gold ran out and so did most of the gold hunters. But some stayed. They found soil here so rich that corn and wheat virtually leaped out of the ground. Much of this land was usually flooded, however, and unsuitable for anything but prodigious marsh grasses.

Build a levee to hold back the water. Dry out the ground. Plow, sow, reap. Rebuild broken levees, make them higher. Dry out the flooded farm. Plow, sow, reap.

It's the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta and much of it is in danger. It is, by any account, one of the most studied land areas in the country. It's wealth of water and land, it's geography and its people have been the subject of report after report--all seeking to provide an equitable solution to problems that will require Solomon-like decisions.

Just what needs to be done is the subject of disagreement. But there is one thing everyone must agree with: portions of the delta face an uncertain future. And most people agree that something must be done. Soon.