Wednesday, June 1, 2005
Management of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta appears
to be on an unsustainable course. As this troubling
truth begins to sink in, calls are mounting to ever-so-gingerly
evaluate the options. Fortunately, the interest in
tackling the many Delta issues is coming from many
corners.
Assemblyman
John Laird of Santa Cruz has a bill to launch a Delta
study that is backed by the Sierra Club and a Silicon
Valley business group. And the Association of California
Water Agencies, in a recent "blueprint" for future
water needs, singled out the Delta as needing a commission
of experts to examine the vital estuary and water supply
source for two-thirds of the state.
The levees
that surround the many islands in the Delta are of
particular concern to Laird's legislation, AB1200.
Years of farming on these islands have exposed the
peat soils, oxidizing them and lowering the elevation
of the islands to the point that they're below the
water level. Only the levees keep them dry. The levees
are substandard and in disrepair. Funds to fix them
are far short of what's necessary. When it comes to
the levees, there's more fighting than fixing going
on these days.
Were certain levees to fail on a cloudless summer day
(as one did last year) or during a flood or an earthquake
or due to rising sea levels, the Delta could quickly
transform into a brackish, undrinkable soup. It's a
scary scenario. The risks need to be better understood
and quantified.
ACWA's laudable call for a "blue ribbon" panel is a tacit admission of
the touchy politics. Inevitably any study of the Delta could eventually lead to
examining how water is conveyed through the system. One option, long
controversial, is to move water supplies not through the Delta but around it,
through either a canal or pipeline system ‹ the so-called
Peripheral Canal.
It's way too soon for political panicking or prejudging
what experts may ultimately say about the Delta's problems
and fixes. But if advice were to come from credible
sources with no agendas other than the well-being of
California, maybe the various Delta interests would
listen.
And maybe somebody ‹ the
Legislature, the governor, the interests themselves ‹ can
agree that some fixes are less scary than the present
course. When it comes to the Delta, knowledge isn't
dangerous. Knowledge and leadership are necessary.
© 2005, The
Fresno Bee
http://www.fresnobee.com/opinion/story/10597987p-11386756c.html