Sacramento Delta “Save the Delta” water politics (#1202)

In an overly simplistic way of describing it, the Sacramento Delta and San Joaquin Delta (just a little further west and south) area was essentially a very large marsh formed by the meeting of those two rivers with the waters of Suisun Bay, a northeastern portion of San Francisco Bay. Since the 1800’s the Delta has been increasingly built up with levees to create agricultural land, while in the 1900’s and later, the waters from those same rivers were increasingly diverted for agriculture and residential use throughout the state (even down to LA).

For various reasons including the age of the levees, changes in the level of the bay, and changes of the water coming into the Delta, the Delta has become increasingly fragile. At the same time, increased water demands in the state have increased pressure to tap the fresh water coming down the two rivers. For what seems like decades, there have been debates to both increase the water supply and reduce the stress on the Delta by using very large tunnels which capture the water further upstream and then divert it to the state and county water systems that deliver agricultural and residential water further south. During the administration of Governor Brown there was finally legislation passed to create such tunnels with one plan to have two 40’ diameter tunnels. Obviously there is continued debate about the wisdom of diverting so much water, and the impact on the Delta, thus the protests in the Delta. See both the Wikipedia page and the Restore the Delta pages.

Having traveled throughout California and having seen the extreme damages to various parts of the state (e.g., the Owens Valley) of water diversion projects, and having seen the amount of agriculture that seems to be of questionable appropriateness for a state where half of it is predominantly dry, I’m willing to question the viability of additional major water diversions and tend to lean against such big fixes. But, the politics and environmental concerns are so complex that it seems impossible for most voters to be able to take a strong position on these issues.

Sources:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sacramento%E2%80%93San_Joaquin_River_Delta
www.restorethedelta.org/more-about-the-delta