FEW RIVERS have as glorious a beginning as the San Joaquin. The headwaters are on the flanks of the Ritter Range a few miles from Mammoth Mountain in the Sierra Nevada. Anyone who has taken an upper-mountain chairlift at Mammoth instantly recognizes the jagged Minarets and the hulks of Mt. Ritter and Banner Peak on the skyline.
Water from melting snow collects in Ediza, Garnet and Thousand Island lakes and others. The new river gathers quickly, rushing past Devils Postpile National Monument and Red's Meadow before plunging over Rainbow Falls and tumbling down one of the most contorted and isolated canyons in the range to the western foothills.
And then the river dies. Except in the wettest years, the San Joaquin dries up for long stretches. It gathers new waters further downstream (down being north) before mingling with the flows of the Sacramento River in forming the delta that ultimately feeds San Francisco Bay. But much of the water in the lower river, including that of its tributaries, is irrigation runoff, contaminated by salts and other minerals, and the outflow from municipal treatment plants. Effectively, it's a sewer .
But now, more than 60 years after the federal government plugged the San Joaquin with Friant Dam northeast of Fresno, the river may come alive again. After all the California water wars, legal battles and reengineering of the state's plumbing system, here is a good-news water story of tremendous proportions. As it evolves, the deal could be good for Southern California by providing water imported from the north that is of a higher quality.
A general settlement was reached June 30 in an 18-year legal battle over whether some of the water used to irrigate farms on the east side of the San Joaquin Valley should remain in the natural channel to make the San Joaquin a real river again. The pact would provide enough water, in fact, to restore the long-destroyed spring and fall salmon runs on the San Joaquin.
The deal, coming after nine months of negotiations, won't be final, lawyers say, until all the parties -- the farmers, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, officials of the state's Fish and Game and Water Resources departments and environmentalists -- agree to the details of the restoration. The settlement process, which involves confidential briefings, could take weeks. Many a California water deal has fallen apart in the process of nailing down the details. But this one is so promising that the parties cannot allow that to happen.
