While understanding the peripheral canal should have been built long ago to protect the Delta—supplying water to 40% of California—the squabbles continue as the opposition still ignores reality using the “environmentalism of limits and the politics of ‘no’” from the Sixties generation of environmentalists, which current thinking, as reflected in the new book "Break Through: From the Death of Environmentalism to the Politics of Possibility", understands just doesn't work anymore.
Changes urged in moving water through Delta
By Matt Weiser - mweiser@sacbee.com
Published 12:00 am PST Saturday, December 1, 2007
California must find another way to move its drinking water through the fragile Delta, a committee appointed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger decided Friday, but the estuary also needs immediate help before anybody leaps into new plumbing projects.
The Delta Vision Blue Ribbon Task Force said there is no mythical single fix for the complex estuary, such as the "peripheral canal" rejected by California voters in 1982.
New plumbing is needed, it said, but too little is known about costs and environmental effects to choose now.
Instead, the task force calls for a study that will lead to that kind of decision by June 2008. In particular, it wants the governor to authorize an assessment of what has come to be called the "dual conveyance" approach.
This involves building an isolated canal for a portion of Sacramento River flows around the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, while also improving water flows through the estuary and boosting upstream water storage.
Task force members said the conflict between environmental threats in the Delta and water shortages statewide makes simple solutions unrealistic.
"Everybody knows we're in a stalemate. They're looking for a way out," said task force Chairman Phil Isenberg, a former Democratic assemblyman. "The assessment we're talking about is really to compel the players to act."
