This draft report, following on the call by Senator Feinstein to build more dams, follows suit and includes a conveyance canal.
Delta ecology emphasized
PANEL CALLS FOR LESS USE AS WATER SOURCE
By Mike Taugher
MediaNews
San Jose Mercury News
Article Launched:10/25/2007 01:34:52 AM PDT
The Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta's ecosystem should not be treated as an afterthought, and water managers should expect to get less delta water in the future, according to a high-level commission.
In a draft report being considered today and Friday, the Delta Vision Blue Ribbon Task Force also recommends the state impose strict limits on new housing in the region's floodplains and that it build new reservoirs and an aqueduct to deliver water from Northern California to the south.
But with the state's thirst on a collision course with the delta's faltering ecosystem, the panel's bedrock conclusion is that the needs of water agencies can no longer trump environmental concerns.
"The history of the delta has been to secure water supplies first and then worry about environmental mitigation later," the panel's latest set of draft recommendations says, noting that such an approach is a recipe for "endless volatility and conflict, to no one's benefit."
After record-high water deliveries out of the delta - and crashing fish populations - that volatility and conflict is on the rise.
Next year, for example, the amount of water pumped from the delta into canals heading into the East Bay, San Joaquin Valley and Southern California could be cut by up to one-third to prevent delta smelt from going extinct, water officials say. Environmentalists say the cost to the water supply will be much less.
Panel members will meet in West Sacramento today and Friday to review the latest draft, which contains their most detailed recommendations to date. The draft will then go through another set of revisions before the panel makes recommendations to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger by the end of the year.
The panel will spend most of 2008 coming up with an implementation plan for that vision.
Among the highlights contained in the latest draft:
• "California cannot sacrifice either the unique estuarine ecosystem of the delta or the critical water supplies that power the state's dynamic economy."
• The delta "is not solely an infrastructure system or an ecosystem. The delta is a place of natural beauty, valued first by Native Americans. It has a regional economy and a regional culture as old as any in California, consisting of historic towns, productive farming and close-knit communities."
• "Reducing reliance on the delta means building greater regional self-sufficiency throughout California."
• "New storage, both in ground and above ground, and improved conveyance must be constructed to capture water when least damaging to the environment and efficiently move it to areas of need.
"Building new conveyance alone, without new storage, would seriously compromise the ability to protect the estuary and provide sufficient environmental flows."
