The ongoing water crisis, the Delta smelt being just the newest, was planned for in the initial water strategy developed by government in the early years of the 20th century, and had it been completed many of the problems we keep facing would never have arisen.
In terms of water storage and flood control, Shasta Dam was engineered to be 200 feet higher than it is, which would have tripled its water storage, and strengthened flood control along the Sacramento River. Auburn Dam was planned, which would have increased water storage and given Sacramento 500 year flood protection. The peripheral canal was planned which would have delivered water to Southern California without damaging the Delta.
Dan Walters: Short-term mentality and water
By Dan Walters - Bee Columnist
Published 12:00 am PDT Sunday, June 3, 2007
There's no inherent -- i.e., rational -- reason why California could not resolve its two-sided water dilemma.
There are, however, a lot of irrational -- i.e., political -- reasons why we have allowed water supply and flood control to languish in the netherworld of unresolved, yet important, public policy issues.
Fundamentally, water policy in all its forms is a very long-range matter, but politics is a very short-range process. The decisions, or non-decisions, on water tend to be driven by immediate, often petty, political factors with consequences that reverberate for decades.
An excellent case in point occurred a few days ago when state and federal water agencies temporarily turned off the pumps that extract water from the southern end of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta to prevent more of the rare Delta smelt from being ground up.
The tiny fish are considered harbingers of the Delta's ecological health and have been vanishing at an alarming rate. It is further proof that we've been messing up the huge estuary, sucking so much water that its natural flows are disrupted and thus lowering the quality of water. But despite the druidic assertions of many self-proclaimed environmentalists that water transfers are the villains, they should look in the mirror.
The problem is not that the State Water Plan -- a complex of dams, reservoirs and canals -- was built, but that it was not completed, thanks to environmental groups and San Joaquin Valley farmers. They persuaded voters in 1982 to reject construction of the Peripheral Canal, which would have transported Sacramento River water around the Delta and allowed the estuary to exist in a more natural, fish-friendly state.
