Besides being a fertile estuary, the Delta is a transit point for much of the state's water and that is the source of much of its problems, which would have been solved years ago with the construction of the peripheral canal.
It is not too late to make it right, build the canal and save the Delta.
Fight widens over Delta
Stripers heat up the battle
By Matt Weiser - mweiser@sacbee.com
Published 12:44 am PST Wednesday, February 6, 2008
The big, tasty and hard-fighting striped bass is a top prize for fishermen in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta.
For everybody else who depends on the Delta's limited water, the racy chrome fish has become a flash point in California's next water war.
Farmers in arid Kern County last week sued the state for protecting the striper as a sportfish. They allege the nonnative striper has been allowed to damage the Delta, preying on endangered native fish, including salmon and the ghostly Delta smelt.
The legal action came like a Taser strike to the state's vocal angling community. And several water law experts say the case may stand as the first blast in what's expected to be a protracted battle over California's most precious resource.
The new lawsuit shows that this war's front has moved beyond the traditional realm of environmentalists versus government. Rhetoric has also hardened between interest groups that have spent the past 10 years trying to cooperate on water issues.
"They're executioners," Roger Mammon said, bluntly labeling water exporters.
Mammon is a board member of the West Delta Chapter of the California Striped Bass Association. "They don't care about the Delta except that it's water and money in their pocket. I think they're full of it."
Anglers call the striped bass innocent. Yes, it's a predator, but they say it successfully coexisted historically with salmon and smelt, and all thrived.
Instead, they blame water exporters – including the Kern farmers – for a bottomless thirst that has pumped Delta water to millions of homes and farm fields at a record pace over the past seven years.
"What's new is that the crisis is upon us," said Dante Nomellini Sr., a longtime water lawyer in Stockton. "This thing's going to heat up a lot more than what we've got right now."
The Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta is the largest estuary on the West Coast. It naturally collects about two-thirds of the state's runoff and funnels it to the sea via San Francisco Bay, along the way providing vital habitat for an array of fish and other wildlife.
But it's also the hub of California's complex water distribution system. The 740,000-acre estuary is the diversion point for state and federal water projects serving 25 million people and more than 2 million acres of rich farmland. Those diversions, at separate pumping facilities near Tracy, reverse natural water flows, alter habitat and kill millions of fish each year.
