Congressional hearing on Delta set

By Mike Taugher
CONTRA COSTA TIMES
Wednesday, February 15, 2006

The scientific reasons for an unexplained ecological crisis in the Delta will be the subject of a congressional hearing later this month as lawmakers dive into California's latest water crisis.

"My district really is the center of California water," said House Resources Chairman Richard Pombo, R-Tracy, who scheduled the hearing. "If you could solve the problems in my district, you could solve the problems in the entire state."

Pombo's district includes a diverse constituency that stretches from the fast-growing area around Tracy, Brentwood and Livermore to San Joaquin Valley farmland to the meandering Delta waterways that hug Contra Costa County.

Pombo scheduled the hearing in Stockton for Feb. 27, six months after he first told the Contra Costa Times editorial board that such a hearing would be held in response to news of an alarming ecological crash in the Delta.

"We kind of waited awhile and allowed some time to pass on purpose to allow them to figure out what was the reason for all this," Pombo said.

In addition to the science behind the fish crash, Pombo said the hearing is likely to touch on questions about the effectiveness of plans dating to the
1992 Central Valley Project Improvement Act and the water policy plan called CalFed that was signed in 2000.

"We've spent hundreds of millions of dollars and billions of dollars in lost economic opportunity," Pombo said. "All of this was intended to bring back the health of the Delta and it doesn't appear that it worked. Why?"

Beginning in about 2002, several important open-water fish populations started declining. They include young striped bass, Delta smelt, threadfin shad and longfin smelt.

Scientists who have looked at the relationships between fish populations, weather and water use patterns so far are at a loss to explain what happened. They say the most likely culprits are exotic species, toxins, water diversions out of the Delta, or a combination of those factors.

Pombo is normally a strong backer of natural resources users even if those uses come at the expense of environmental protection.

But in the byzantine world of California water, those tendencies could be at odds with some of the interests of his district, which includes Delta farmers who are heavily affected by water diversions from the Delta to San Joaquin Valley farmers, and some of those valley farmers.

And the stakes are high: Delta water irrigates 7 million acres in the San Joaquin Valley and provides at least some drinking water to two-thirds of the state's residents.

"I don't want this to become a political thing or a regional thing," he said. "If someone comes in and says we need to stop all (water) exports, then the question is what is that going to do (economically)?"

Rep. George Miller, D-Martinez, first wrote to Pombo last July to request a hearing.

Miller, a former chairman of the committee Pombo now heads and a co-author of the Central Valley Project Improvement Act, called the Stockton hearing a good first step.

"I'm a little worried that it's going to be a little too narrow" and might ignore an inquiry into decisions that might be contributing to the crisis at a time when it appears to be worsening, Miller said.

"It's cascading downhill, out of control," Miller said.

For example, Miller noted plans by state water officials to eventually increase the rate of water deliveries out of the Delta at a time when fish populations continue to decline. He also noted that questions have been raised by courts and panels of scientists about the validity of key documents that guide Delta water policy.

"I hope this isn't the only hearing. This cannot be done in a vacuum,"
Miller said.

Pombo said more hearings are likely.

"It leads to more hearings on the legislative fix. At this point, it has to be, you (scientists) tell us what went wrong," Pombo said.

The hearing is scheduled Feb. 27 at 8 a.m., Port of Stockton, Rough and Ready Island, 315 Fyffe Ave., Stockton.

Mike Taugher covers natural resources. Reach him at 925-943-8257 or mtaugher@cctimes.com.

http://nl.newsbank.com/nl-search/we/Archives?p_action=doc&p_docid=10FD23F02F40D8F8&p_docnum=1