Sacramento San Joaquin Delta

A National Academy of Sciences panel has concluded that the much-disputed fish protections that have curbed water deliveries to the San Joaquin Valley and Southern California are scientifically justified. The findings, contained in a report that will be released Friday, largely validate environmental actions taken by two federal agencies to save the imperiled delta smelt and protect declining populations of salmon that migrate through the Sacramento-San Joaquin delta. The protections, imposed under the federal Endangered Species Act, have recently grown stricter, compounding water shortages stemming from the state's three-year drought.

One thing stood out in the pile of documents released Thursday detailing state plans to replumb California's water hub: Construction could start on the massive project before water managers know whether it will work as intended. The still-evolving proposal, backed by Gov. Jerry Brown's administration and the federal government, is designed to partially restore the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta environment and halt reductions in delta water exports. But uncertainty over the volume of future water deliveries is likely to linger for years as government scientists try to nail down how much water imperiled salmon and smelt need in the delta.

A levee break that flooded an island in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta was declared a federal disaster Thursday by President Bush, qualifying the state and local governments for millions of dollars in federal aid. The breach last month ruined farmers' homes, killed animals and left 12,000 acres of crops under water.

An earthquake that shuts down water deliveries from Northern California for a year could devastate the Los Angeles County economy, costing $55 billion and wiping out a half-million jobs, according to a new study. The research by a team of economists attempts to gauge the effects of a major earthquake disrupting water deliveries from the Sacramento-San Joaquin delta, which provides roughly a quarter of Southern California's water supply. The report concludes that L.A. County could fairly easily weather a six-month stop in deliveries from the north by ramping up conservation efforts and using reserves stored in Southland reservoirs.

After months of smooth sailing, the ambitious state and federal effort to save the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, the aquatic lifeblood of the California economy, is facing serious legal and political problems. In the last week, lawsuits were filed against the so-called CalFed program by the Municipal Water District of Orange County, the California Farm Bureau Federation and a coalition of rural counties in Northern California.

An exotic water weed called hydrilla is threatening the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta waterway, worried officials said. Madera County Agricultural Commissioner Don Cripes said hydrilla has clogged inland water passages in the east and south since it was discovered in Florida in the early 1960s. And now it has been found in Eastman Lake and the Chowchilla Rivers, near Raymond in Madera County, southwest of Yosemite.

The continuing search for a politically acceptable means of apportioning water from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta advanced Monday with a joint announcement by Gov. Pete Wilson and U.S. Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt that a draft of the final plan will be released by year's end. Even that plan, however, may only signal the beginning of a multiyear process aimed at repairing years of environmental damage to the delta while meeting agriculture needs and growing urban demands.

For Bill Leisic, the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta is a sort of Huck Finn country where he can drop a line into his favorite fishing hole and hook his limit of bass. To officials in charge of moving water to Central Valley farmers and millions of people in Southern California, it is the state's most important spigot. Without its fresh water, much of the state would go thirsty.

Within the next few years, the Southern California Metropolitan Water District may have to spend $1.4 billion on new treatment facilities to purify polluted and potentially cancer-causing water from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. That gloomy news was contained in two reports from state and local water officials, prompted by concern over the safety of delta water. The delta, fed by Northern California rivers, is a major source of Southern California water.

No concoction of nature, with the possible exception of the foreboding San Andreas Fault, is as intertwined in the daily lives of Californians as these 700 miles of meandering rivers and overgrown sloughs. Through a tangle of levees and canals, beneath drawbridges and around farm islands sprinkled white with pear blossoms, flows the drinking water for 20 million people, saved from the salty fingers of the sea by an engineering feat of pumps and giant pipes.

The Bay Delta Conservation Plan has the potential to untangle some of the expensive and inefficient knots in California's water supply system while repairing some of the damage done over the decades to the landscape and wildlife of the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta. Gov. Jerry Brown's "preferred alternative" of tunnels around the delta may work - or it may not, and Californians still need to know more before committing the state to a new water diversion project. Analysis and environmental review are ongoing.

Federal biologists have concluded that another native fish of the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta is headed toward extinction, underscoring the region's severe environmental problems. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced Thursday that it has determined that longfin smelt in the delta deserve Endangered Species Act protections. But the finding won't expand restrictions on the delta's water operations because the agency is simply designating the fish a candidate for listing.

For more than a decade, the state's de facto water baron has been a man most Californians never heard of. Oliver W. Wanger is not the archetypal power broker embodied by William Mulholland but a workaholic U.S. District Court judge whose Fresno courtroom was the forum for many of the state's fiercest water conflicts. Last week was his last on the bench. At the age of 70, Wanger returned to private practice, leaving a record of long, complex rulings and a parting diatribe at federal scientists that has echoed across the country.

A judge ordered a federal agency Tuesday to rewrite protections for migrating salmon that have reduced water shipments from Northern California, concluding that some of the pumping curbs were based on "equivocal or bad science. " But in a mixed ruling, U.S. District Judge Oliver Wanger also said that the National Marine Fisheries Service was justified in finding that government water operations that export supplies from the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta jeopardize dwindling populations of chinook salmon and several other fish on the endangered species list.

A proposal to build a large water tunnel under the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta is incomplete, confused and plagued by a number of scientific gaps despite years of study, according to a National Research Council report. The document bolsters criticisms that the agencies overseeing the project are not seriously evaluating alternatives and are instead pursuing a preordained outcome without examining the effects. "The lack of an appropriate structure creates the impression that the entire effort is little more than a post-hoc rationalization of a previously selected group of facilities," write the authors, an independent panel of scientists and other experts.

A drilling rig bit into the bed of California's biggest river, hauling up sage-green tubes of clay and sand the consistency of uncooked fudge. The rig workers rolled the muck into strips, dried it in sugar-sized cubes and crushed them under their palms. They packed slices into carefully labeled canning jars for testing at an engineering lab. They were taking the river bottom samples for a $13-billion project that would shunt water around ? or under ? the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta to the big aqueducts that ferry supplies south.

A drilling rig bit into the bed of California's biggest river, hauling up sage-green tubes of clay and sand the consistency of uncooked fudge. The rig workers rolled the muck into strips, dried it in sugar-sized cubes and crushed them under their palms. They packed slices into carefully labeled canning jars for testing at an engineering lab. They were taking the river bottom samples for a $13-billion project that would shunt water around ? or under ? the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta to the big aqueducts that ferry supplies south.

Californians need to take significantly less water from the state's single largest supply, according to a state report that could lay the foundation for more limits on water shipments to the Southland. The State Water Board document provides new ammunition in the intensifying battle over the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, a source of water for roughly two of three Californians and a long-time victim of the state's great thirst. The draft report, released Wednesday, acknowledges that the delta's many environmental problems extend beyond water diversions.

More water may be headed to the Southland and the San Joaquin Valley after a judge concluded Tuesday that a federal agency acted arbitrarily when it imposed pumping limits to protect migrating salmon and steelhead. The decision by U.S. District Court Judge Oliver W. Wanger is the latest development in a tangle of legal challenges to restrictions based on the Endangered Species Act that are cutting water exports from the Sacramento-San Joaquin delta, east of San Francisco. Wanger sharply criticized some of the scientific rationale for the pumping curbs, but stopped short of jettisoning them, saying he needed more information before deciding on a cure.