SACRAMENTO — Fortunately, winter snowfall in the Sierra was average. So homes haven't flooded in the Central Valley. Neither is there a drought, at least caused by nature.
There is a court-caused drought, of sorts, because a federal judge is trying to protect a vanishing little fish, the smelt, from being sucked into and chomped up by giant water pumps in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. Consequently, there's a 30% cut in deliveries of southbound water from Northern California.
But this is noticed primarily by San Joaquin Valley farmers.
So although it's fortunate that no swollen rivers have burst their banks or carwashes have been padlocked, it's also unfortunate in a way. Because public pressure is off politicians and water warriors to finally fix California's old, vulnerable plumbing system.
We're getting close to the 50th anniversary of the last time Sacramento achieved anything really significant regarding water development. In 1959, newly elected Gov. Pat Brown cajoled and coerced the Legislature -- and later the voters -- into enacting the then-controversial California Water Project.
That came only after killer floods had inundated Northern California four years earlier. It was the worst flooding in nearly a century. The main culprit was the Feather River, a major tributary of the Sacramento River. The Feather flooded Yuba City and Marysville, killing more than 20 people and floating houses toward San Francisco Bay, 130 miles southwest.
"We must build now and ask questions later," declared state water director Harvey Banks, an exhortation he used in his many speeches selling the water project. The fish-chomping Delta pumping plant later was named after Banks.
Brown formed a coalition of flood-frightened northerners, parched valley farmers and thirsty southerners to build the huge Oroville Dam on the Feather River. He also built the California Aqueduct to deliver water south.
But Brown ran out of money for a third vital piece of the plan: a peripheral canal to funnel Sacramento River water around the fragile, brackish Delta and directly into the southbound aqueduct. Since then, the Delta fishery has tanked -- not just the tiny smelt, but popular salmon and striped bass.
