It is good that the Nature Conservancy accepts that the Peripheral Canal is needed to improve the Delta’s plumbing system. However, the Conservancy and other environmentalists also need to accept that a Canal cannot be solely an irrigation system to water the Delta. Such a Canal also needs to serve as a conveyance system to divert water around the Delta for export south to help fund the Delta’s restoration.
Even though the environmentalists agree that the Peripheral Canal would be the best environmental solution, their version of water allocation would mean no water moving south of the Delta. They want "surplus" winter flows to be used to flush the Delta in an artificial version of a flood, and they want the public to pay to store some water behind Shasta and Oroville dams to use in the summer to keep the Delta waterways high. This could not happen without halting exports. In 1982 in discussions with opponents of the Canal, I suggested and offered to support putting Delta flow standards into the state constitution. Standards were designed to be median historical flows into the Delta with the balance available for export. They all rejected this.
Common sense says that high winter flood flows are by definition “surplus” water since the water rushes out to the ocean through the Golden Gate. But certain "experts" have identified those flows as essential to the environment of the delta, thereby redefining this surplus as zero. The other problem is the Delta we see today did not exist before the 1850s. To maintain the environment, you have to pick a start date. Any date after 1850 is a man-made environment. It should be anathema to the environmental community to fight so hard to preserve a status quo that is man-made and not natural, but that is the politics of the Delta today. No one is advocating that we tear down all the levees and permit again sheet flooding of the Delta, even though that is the natural definition of a river delta.
So the challenge is to preserve something that is very recent and is constantly under threat of change as nature does not like levees. But the only money to help stabilize the Delta comes from water users in southern and central California who are so desperate for water that they are willing to overpay for it. If the environmentalists want the money, they need to agree to some level of water exports.
A delicious irony of all this is the recalcitrant stance by the environmental community makes it much easier to justify the Auburn Dam or the raising of Shasta Dam as the only means to store water for use when mother nature fails to provide adequate flows to the Delta.
January 13th, 2009 at 12:00 am
If you think the environmentalists aren’t being reasonable now about all things related to the Delta, you ain’t seen nothing yet.
On December 1st of last year, Assemblyman Salas introduced a bill (AB 13) that, if approved, would create a new State Convervancy (the Sacramento-San
Joaquin Delta Conservancy) within the Resources Agency that would be charged with the responsibilty to provide policy oversight, foster implementation of, and manage funds to implement those components of, a comprehensive
delta sustainability program intended to restore and manage habitat in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta and Suisun Marsh.
Or, in other words: Picture the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy in charge of the State’s water infrastructure. Essentially, that’s what you’d end up with and if that doesn’t scare the holy bajeebers out of you, you just haven’t been paying attention.