As many writers, and all the Californians paying attention, have long discovered, nothing about water in California is an easy fix, and the Delta sure fits that pattern.
Between recreation, housing, flooding, and environmental concerns it is a battleground where some of the most important water related policy in our area is being worked out.
An excerpt.
Dan Walters: Everyone says Delta's important, but that's the only agreement
By Dan Walters -- Bee ColumnistPublished 12:01 am PDT Tuesday, August 22, 2006
RYDE -- Everyone, or so it would seem, agrees that the 738,000-acre Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta is one of California's most vital resources. That, however, is just about as far as the agreement stretches.
There is long-standing and deep-seated political discord over why the Delta is important, and that, in turn, blocks any accord on policies to protect its important qualities -- a stalemate that shows no signs of being resolved, even if the myriad interests involved talk incessantly.
The Delta plays many roles, as a source of much of California's agricultural and drinking water, as a highly productive agricultural region, as a major habitat for birds, animals and fish, as a scenic open space situated between two major urban areas, and as a boating and recreational playground. And often, those roles and their advocates are in conflict.
A recent boat tour of some Delta sloughs and panel discussion at the historic Ryde Hotel was just one of the forums in which the conflicts were aired. There was a more elaborate conference in Stockton recently, and the Legislature perennially wrestles with the Delta's conflicts, mostly without agreement. Even when there are conceptual deals, friction over details often dooms implementation.
The so-called "Cal-Fed" process was launched amid great fanfare in 1994 -- a multiagency, multipurpose effort to resolve conflicts over water quality, water export, flood control and related issues. But eventually, despite spending untold millions of dollars, Cal-Fed stalled out, unable to resolve fundamental disagreements among water users, environmentalists and other "stakeholders."
