Monday, March 13, 2006
As populations of fish that live year-round in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta continue to dwindle to record low numbers, there have been two wildly different political responses.
Environmentalists are filing more and more lawsuits to challenge the state and federal governments' management of the Delta and their record level of pumping.
Central Valley congressmen and some agriculture water districts, meanwhile, see the problem as too little pumping and too much of their money going to restoration efforts that have not worked. They want to stop funding the restoration and to relax a 1992 federal law that governs pumping in the Delta.
The political and legal situation is fast approaching the meltdown stage. And don't look for the scientists to figure things out and point us to a painful solution.
As the Delta smelt, threadfin shad and other species continue to vanish from this magnificent estuary, a historic research effort has not been able to answer the fundamental question: Why?
"We're working on it," a federal fisheries biologist recently told a congressional panel.
It may be time to consider that some things are simply beyond a certain scientific explanation.
This Delta is so altered (1,100 miles of levees, miles of canals, numerous pumps) and so invaded (dozens upon dozens of foreign species) and thus so dynamic that you have to wonder whether an army of Nobel Prize-winning scientists could explain precisely what's happening. The Delta may be dying because we are pumping way too much freshwater from this estuary. Or it could be those invasive Asian clams are gobbling up the native species' food supply. Or it could be the dams that release freshwater into the Delta in the summer when nature intended the Delta to be salty. Or it could be pesticides. Yet again, it could be all of these explanations in some complicated and dynamic combination.
Some difficult decisions loom that will be based, inevitably, on insufficient information. Lasting solutions may involve new plumbing to move freshwater around the Delta (particularly in the summer) rather than through it. Or less pumping. Or more efforts to combat the invasive species.
Every side in the Delta debate would be uncomfortable with a real list of the real options. And that would be just fine. If these political stakeholders begin to feel as uncomfortable as the Delta fish, perhaps we'll make some progress.
http://www.sacbee.com/content/opinion/story/14229593p-15052682c.html
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