Sacramento San Joaquin River Delta

Take a good look because you won't see this often: The Legislature's majority party trying to surrender power. It's power that Democrats have been incapable or unwilling to exercise anyway. And it's not like they're giving it to Republicans. They're attempting to create an independent governing body to decide how to restore the ecosystem and remodel the waterworks of the deteriorating Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, a major source of drinking water for Southern Californians and irrigation for San Joaquin Valley farms.

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.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein has drawn up legislation that for the next two years would loosen Endangered Species Act restrictions on pumping water from the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta to increase irrigation deliveries to San Joaquin Valley growers. Feinstein has not released details of the proposal, which she is calling the Emergency Temporary Water Supply Amendment and which is expected to be attached to a jobs bill. In a statement Thursday she said that the language had not been finalized and that she was open to "alternative ways" of boosting water supplies for the valley's west side, which has been hit hard by delivery cuts caused by the state drought and the pumping limits.

When Gov. Jerry Brown wrapped up his tenure last time through, he left a huge unresolved question for California: In the wake of a failed 1982 initiative to fund the so-called peripheral canal, how would the state distribute and safeguard its water supply? How to maximize the water supply and allocate it fairly has been debated often in the years since without producing a solution. But it now looks as if Brown intends to finish up this piece of unresolved business. Earlier this month, state water officials presented him with the basics of a plan that would have profound implications for the future of California, as well as the legacy of its governor.

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.

A federal judge says California water managers need to redo their plans to ensure that the state's pumping systems don't push native, wild salmon closer to extinction. Environmentalists say the order issued in Fresno on Wednesday could force regulators to temporarily change the way they move water to ensure that endangered winter-run Chinook salmon can spawn and migrate safely. The ruling affects two salmon species as well as the threatened Central Valley steelhead. The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation and the state Department of Water Resources will have to rethink how they'll operate water projects in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta.

The delta smelt, a tiny endangered fish causing big headaches for California's water kingpins, could soon get help. A Central Valley lawmaker wants the state to build a hatchery to boost the smelt's flagging population. Sen. Dean Florez (D-Shafter) has proposed a Delta Smelt Preservation and Restoration Act with the primary goal of building at least one hatchery by 2001 to breed the fish. Smelt have been a victim of the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta's flagging ecological health and the pull of giant aqueduct pumps that send delta water south.

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.

Re "State could reduce water supply," Oct. 31 Your article correctly reminds Californians of the water crisis. However, saying that water allocations to local water agencies may increase if we have a wet winter lulls readers into a state of false security. Even torrential downpours will not make it possible to fulfill local water agencies' needs because there is a regulatory noose tightening its hold on California's primary water delivery system, the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta.

The state Legislature finished with one piece of a multi-part water package Tuesday when the Assembly approved a bill mandating a statewide drop in per capita water use. Lawmakers were headed for another long night, with the Assembly expected to take up several other measures approved by the Senate in a midnight session Monday, including a massive water bond. "We are comfortable and confident that we will wrap up and we will have the votes," Assembly Speaker Karen Bass (D-Los Angeles)

The imperiled fish that has been at the center of California's water wars may be at its highest numbers in a decade, judging by the results of a recent survey. Every month in the fall, state biologists tow nets in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, sampling for the threatened delta smelt to estimate the native fish's population. The September catch this year, though still small by historic standards, was the biggest since 2001, when the numbers of smelt and other delta fish started to plunge to dangerously low levels, triggering cutbacks to water customers in the Central Valley and Southern California.

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.

Through much of the 1990s, California suffered a money drought. By 2003, revenue had dried up severely and California seemed in terminal crisis. Then came the deluge of 2006. It rained dollars: Several big-time Silicon Valley investors cashed out, resulting in a huge boost in income tax revenue, and Sacramento was awash in money. In response, lawmakers doled out the abundant funds to interests who believed, often correctly, that previous budgets had left them unfairly parched. But the deluge quickly ended, and the state's situation became worse than ever because it had failed to either save the excess or change its spending ways during the unexpected year that it rained money.

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.

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.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein has drawn up legislation that for the next two years would loosen Endangered Species Act restrictions on pumping water from the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta to increase irrigation deliveries to San Joaquin Valley growers. Feinstein has not released details of the proposal, which she is calling the Emergency Temporary Water Supply Amendment and which is expected to be attached to a jobs bill. In a statement Thursday she said that the language had not been finalized and that she was open to "alternative ways" of boosting water supplies for the valley's west side, which has been hit hard by delivery cuts caused by the state drought and the pumping limits.

Reclamation engineers and members of Congress knew 50 years ago, when they decided to bring clear mountain waters hundreds of miles to the San Joaquin Valley for crop irrigation, that the valley's soils would brew an environmental problem. Their solution was to send the problem downstream. The cost of that eyes-wide-shut mistake is finally coming due, to the tune of at least $900 million.

Dean E. Murphy's recent story on the frailties of the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta painted a poignant portrait of life along the delicate estuary, a major water source for much of California ("Delta Blues: Trouble in Paradise?," June 20). The Times and Murphy should be commended for putting readers in touch with the state's environmental and economic problems caused by the estuary's condition. The article dramatically highlighted one of California's most fundamental problems--people's needs vs environmental needs.

The big federal pumps that were cranked up over the weekend to send more Northern California water south will be turned down Thursday in the ongoing tug of war between water exports and fish protections. U.S. District Judge Oliver Wanger, who last week temporarily lifted pumping limits designed to protect migrating salmon in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, Wednesday declined to block similar curbs federal biologists say are necessary to save the imperiled delta smelt. That means the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation will turn off one of the five pumps it uses to draw water from the delta east of San Francisco.

Years ago, pundits and pols began redrawing the California political map with an east-west divide, erasing the historic north-south split. Now they can partition it north-south again, at least in mapping the reignited water war. In voting patterns and attitudes about social issues and the environment, California generally has become divided east and west -- interior and coastal. "The closer to the ocean, the farther to the left," notes longtime Democratic political consultant Richie Ross.