The Sacramento Delta: A Gordian Knot - The Ripple Effect: The Fate of Freshwater in the Twenty-First Century - page 206

rulings in the first decade of the twenty-first century limited the amount of water irrig-
ators could take from the Delta, thus protecting the aquasystem. This provoked a fight
between farmers, fishermen, and politicians.
Waterworks are not the Delta's only problem. Natural gas is being extracted by drill
rigs from beneath marshland, which adds to the Delta's pollution. With land in the
Delta much cheaper than in Sacramento and San Francisco, towns have grown into
small cities, and subdivisions have risen behind the old levees, in floodplains, without
much regulatory oversight. In a catch-22, cities and counties have the authority to ap-
prove development but bear no legal responsibility for flood protection. State agencies
are responsible for flood protection yet have no legal control over construction permits.
When levees fail or floodplains flood, property owners have successfully sued the state
(i.e., taxpayers) for compensation. This has set off another legal tussle.
Each of these constituencies—farmers, cities and counties, energy companies, in-
dustry, environmentalists—has laid claim to the Delta's water in an ad hoc way over the
years. The result is an unholy mess. As the population expands and demand for water
rises, competing claimants are fighting over a resource that is badly deteriorating.
The Delta's levees are aging and leaky; they have drained tidal marshes and exposed
peat to oxygen; as the peat decomposes, the land subsides and releases carbon dioxide
(a greenhouse gas). Most of the Delta has sunk below sea level, rendering the levees un-
stable and allowing salt water to intrude. Diversion of about 48 percent of the Delta's
freshwater —to supply farms and cities—has profoundly impacted the region's twenty-
two fish species. Moreover, CALFED, a federal-state consortium founded in 1994 to
handle disputes and monitor the Delta's environmental health, is facing insolvency. As
a result, the environmental group American Rivers declared the Sacramento Delta the
nation's most endangered waterway in 2009.
Peter Gleick , president of the Pacific Institute, describes the warring constituencies
as “hardly monolithic blocs.” Consider agriculture: “The reality is that you not only have
farmers against developers and environmentalists, you have Northern California farm-
ers versus Southern California farmers in the Delta. San Joaquin farmers versus Sacra-
mento farmers. Cotton versus rice. Northernrice growers versus southernrice growers.
It goes on and on. Every stakeholder has a strong interest in what happens to the Delta's
water, but how do you get beyond the impasse? So far, we haven't.”
In 1980, as California was recovering from its longest drought since the Depression,
state legislators proposed building a Peripheral Canal to route water around the Delta,
which would protect the area's sensitive ecology while delivering more water to Los
Angeles and the south. The plan was to tap into the Sacramento River below the capital
and channel water 43 miles around the Delta into the Cliton Court Forebay, the reser-
voir that primes the giant water pumps that shoot Sierra snowmelt south. But the Peri-