An influential Cabinet-level group Friday released its prescription for the sickly Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, including a 2011 goal to break ground on a new canal system – without the approval of the California Legislature.

The panel backed away from creating a new governing body to oversee the delta or altering the California Constitution to say that the delta’s health is as important as supplying water to 25 million Californians. That differed from another governor-appointed task force that contended that new leadership and a constitutional amendment were needed to fix a fragile ecosystem that also serves as the hub of the state’s water supply.

In other words, the executive group adopted pretty much every recommendation of the Delta Vision group save those that offered any real protection for beleaguered waterway.

The walking-on-water Aquafornia blog posted excerpted reactions from multiple newspapers, including this from Phil Isenberg in the Sacramento Bee:

Isenberg had not seen the committee’s final report. But it adopted every proposal from his task force except one.

The task force recommended a new policymaking council to bring
cohesion to the more than 200 agencies that manage the 740,000-acre
estuary in a haphazard fashion. It viewed this as a key initial step
before starting major waterworks and habitat projects.

But the committee opted to delay the governance question while starting work in other areas, including canal planning.

“I think it’s too bad they didn’t make a recommendation on that,”
Isenberg said. “I’m not shocked, but it’s too bad because everyone in
the puzzle knows you can’t fit the pieces together without a governance
solution.”

I’m on my way out the door right now, but it’s hard to support any water solution that doesn’t involve specific guarantees for the California Delta, which the state’s water users have treated roughly the same way a baby treats a diaper.

Update: Dan Bacher (Fish Sniffer editor) weighs in on the plan, and it’s not pretty. Here’s only one passage from his editorial:

The plan includes a timeline of proposed actions and associated events for the destruction of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, the largest and most significant estuary on the West Coast of the Americas. One of the amazing things about the plan is the sequence of events and actions it includes. While the plan’s goal is to “break ground” for “new conveyance in 2011, the timeline doesn’t require the Department of Fish and Game to “recommend in stream flows” for the Delta until 2012!

Wouldn’t it be more logical to only begin infrastructure construction after in stream flows for fish are recommended and secured? This prioritization of the canal over the needs of fish clearly demonstrates that the plans “eco language” of restoring the Delta is nothing other than green washing of the most environmentally destructive project in California history.

See you on the Delta, Tom Chandler.

ps – you can follow this issue on the Aquafornia blog, and via the Sac Bee’s Twitter Feed.

delta, delta vision, peripheral canal, california water wars

Longtime Underground readers will realize most the “certain” lands referenced in the lawsuit belong to Westlands Irrigation District – the politically connected irrigation group (and Underground whipping boys) who bought some hugely expensive private property on the McCloud River so there’d be one less obstacle standing in the way of raising Shasta Dam (and flooding miles of the Upper Sac, McCloud, and Pit Rivers).

From the SF Chronicle: Group wants chemical-filled farmland retired:

The giant state and federal pumps in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta that funnel water to 25 million Californians should be shut down until certain Central Valley farmers retire hundreds of thousands of acres of chemical-laden farmland, according to a lawsuit filed today by a state water watchdog.

Irrigating agricultural land in the western San Joaquin Valley tainted with selenium, mercury, boron and other toxic substances constitutes an unreasonable use of a public resource protected by state laws and has contributed to the sharp decline of endangered fish species, said the California Water Impact Network.

“We think there is a simple solution to California’s water problems – to retire all of the drainage-impaired lands in the Central Valley. A second is water conservation – agriculture uses 80 percent of the developed surface water,” said Carolee Krieger, president and founder C-WIN.

The always-excellent Aquafornia blog offers multiple perspectives on the lawsuit, including this unique angle from the Stockton Record:

State and federal water managers have increased exports to farms and cities south of the Delta even as fish populations plummet, says the lawsuit, filed in Sacramento County Superior Court. Northern California reservoirs have been “cannibalized” for the sake of Southern California, and irrigation of drainage-impaired lands in the western San Joaquin Valley is a waste of water, the groups say.

I guarantee this lawsuit won’t find favor in Sacramento, where the Governator (recently picked for Environmental Villan of the Year by Field & Stream) is desperately trying to build a peripheral canal and add more storage to the state’s reservoirs.

A complete halt to pumping from the Delta is an unlikely result, but even the threat of it should, uh…. galvanize the discussion.

See you at the Delta, Tom Chandler.

water wars, california water wars, delta, westlands irrigation district

Powered by ScribeFire.

This one’s a doozy; In 2006, a levee broke on Prospect Island (I used to fish there quite often when I was hitting the California Delta with some regularity), and fish populated the newly flooded “lake.” Given their deep concern for fisheries, the Bureau simply patched the levees and pumped the “lake” dry, killing tens of thousands of delta fish.

Anglers, needless to say, were pissed. From the Sacramento Bee:

Tens of thousands of fish have died on Prospect Island, although no complete count is yet available, said Reclamation Bureau spokesman Jeff McCracken.

For nearly two years, since a levee protecting the low-lying island broke in January 2006, Prospect Island had been transformed into another tangled waterway deep within the Delta. Tidal flows moved in and out through two breaches. Carp, striped bass and catfish swam there. People boated in for fishing or duck hunting. Sometimes boats capsized.

That ended last month, when a Reclamation Bureau contractor finished patching the levees and began pumping most of the water out into surrounding sloughs. The pumps mangled some fish. Others died in water too shallow to survive.

Word began spreading through fishing newsletters and Web sites as furious anglers pushed for a rescue. Finally, state wildlife officials began a probe and federal crews cleared out many of the dead fish to keep their decomposing bodies from depleting oxygen.

On Friday, with federal approval, the outdoors enthusiasts who had been demanding action got their first official chance to try to save what was left.

In terms of the Delta’s total fish population, I’m sure this is just a drip, but while we may have plenty of stripers, the same can’t be said for every other species trapped in the ever-shallowing water.

Read the story — with pictures — at the Sacramento Bee: Save a fish, please an angler – sacbee.com