The ongoing fixes suggested keep coming back to the same old song, the peripheral canal, and maybe this time it will get done, and get the water rolling south.
Dan Walters: New tries at fixing the Delta
By Dan Walters - Bee Columnist
Published 12:00 am PST Friday, February 9, 2007
The Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta -- the massive estuary through which the melting Sierra snowpack finds its way into San Francisco Bay and the sea -- plays myriad roles that often conflict with one another.
Simultaneously, it is a vital wildlife habitat, sewer for human and agricultural waste, source of drinking water for two-thirds of the state, recreational playground, home to increasing numbers of people, and agricultural producer. Not surprisingly, therefore, the Delta is also an arena in which powerful interests wage perpetual political war.
The decades-old war over who controls the Delta and which of its many roles becomes dominant has been, for the most part, a stalemate, thus typifying what often happens when the state's political system confronts a complex issue.
While its politics remain gridlocked, however, the 500,000-acre region itself continues to change. Its wildlife continues to dwindle, the century-old levees that define and protect its many agricultural islands continue to deteriorate, the development pressures and water demands of an expanding population continue to increase, and the potential danger to levees from earthquakes and/or global warming, which could raise sea levels, grows more acute.
