Delta Water Woes

Interesting article, curious to know your thoughts regarding potential financial impact on our industry, local home owners, and towns like Brentwood and Byron if water were in fact diverted.
http://www.ktvu.com/news/16911240/detail.html

Some snippets:

-The PPIC report recommends California build a canal to pipe fresh water from the Sacramento River around the delta instead of continuing to send it through a changing and unstable estuary.

-The study says continuing to channel water through the delta's maze of levees is risky and costly/would be a waste of taxpayer money.

-"Ultimately there are two choices: no exports or a peripheral canal. Keeping the delta as it is, is not one of them," said co-author Jay Lund, an engineering professor at the University of California, Davis.

What are the logical and inevitable results of building a canal? The Delta as we know it will be no more. The farmland will become a salt marsh. The levees will deteriorate and the channels will become brackish or salty. The navigable waterways will eventually deteriorate to the point that they are no longer navigable.

I say that if SoCal wants our water, let them pay to maintain the Delta. Don't rape the rest of us by making us pay for a solution that will ultimately result in the loss of a treasured resource. In the mean time, halt all non-agricultural water shipments to the South.

Isnt that what the CA aquaduct (the big canal going south on I-5) is for?

But if this happened... I dont think they would divert all the water, just enough probably to maintain So Cals needs, and also to not let the Nor Cal areas overflow...or ruin levees. I dont see how it would be possible to make it so there wasnt ANY water going through the delta.

Although it would be neat to see all the crap under the water if it did dry up.

Jimmy- That's not the point. If the canal were built, there would be no impetus to maintain the Delta any longer. The SoCal people get what they want- NorCal water, and the NorCal people get a continuously deteriorating Delta system.

Its a SoCal water grab scam. Using earthquakes, Katrina and global-warming fears to steal/kill the delta.

I go to UC Davis where all the contributors to the report are from and have taken classes from them. Basically its their recommendation among many alternatives weighing all the economic and ecological factors . And the likelihood of this happening in the next 10-20 years is pretty much zero imo. Its been proposed before, shot down by voters (80s?)

Here is a pretty good read on all the alternatives facing the Delta and the rational they chose to come up with their solution.
http://www.ppic.org/content/pubs/rb/RB_207JLRB.pdf

GD, sorry to sound like an whacko enviro but the real delta was stolen/killed 100 years ago when we built the levees. I love the delta as much as anyone, but there are lots of problems with its current state.

Building this new canal is a solution to get more water down to so-cal, not a solution to fixing the deteriorating delta.

and braap- that proposal that you mention in your post was made in 1982, and was "soundly rejected" by voters who feared that it was more of a water-grab act by so-cal agencies.

The delta does overflow, i.e. Spring 2006 when the boating ban was placed until mid may because it was to full, and the wake from any boats could have destroyed levees.

I think its purely natural that they could never divert the water so much that it fails to support the delta levees structurally and/or dry up. Im not an enviro or scientists but I do know the delta fairly well and how many people live and survive within it.

If they failed to maintain the levees, you have failed homes in Bethel, Oakley, Tracy, Isleton, Walnut Grove etc. Not to mention multi million dollar homes in the disco area that are millions because they are on water.

Im not one to quickly poo poo the idea of sharing or resources with So Cal (even if they do make fun of us for saying hella). But I think if we could keep enough water for us, and help maintain the levees/ecosystem of the delta, we can help with our surplus to them.

I dont know if that is truely their plan our not, but it seems like that is the only logical way they could pass something like this. just my $.02.

Quote from Braap's Link:

"Californians will need to realize that the delta cannot be all things to all people. Tradeoffs are inevitable."

Hmm...I wonder what group of recreationalists would be hit first? Answer... (in a p'd off old man voice) Those GD water boarders...

Keep in mind this study was done by NorCal researchers not influenced by SoCal politics (hopefully). Is just a recommendation, does not mean the plan is in the works. And even if it was, how many years of env impact reports, budgets, lawsuits, etc. would tie that up? Water would still be there, its not like Vics and Disco would be empty. The major factors are ecological, economics, and water supply. So they picked the plan that was the best for all 3 needs. Not many fish can survive if there is no water right?

My understanding is that the peripheral canal would actually improve water conditions in the delta over what they currently are, assuming that the existing pumping plants/canals are shut down.

The big issue now is that the pumping causes water flow in some of the sloughs to reverse their flow. Instead of there being a continuous flow of water towards the bay on all sloughs the pumping causes some channels to suck brackish water back up from the bay.

In addition, the bulk of the water that would be in the peripheral canal would come from high volume sources (American and Sacramento Rivers) that currently bypass most of the delta. The existing pumping plants near Stockton and Discovery bay are essentially sucking up the water that comes from the smaller rivers, such as the Mokelumne, San Joaquin, etc.

The Sacramento rivers joins the "delta" at Antioch, too far south to be of much use to "flush" the majority of the delta. If they allowed the smaller rivers to flush and diverted the Sacramento water instead the over quality of the water in the delta would improve.

That is, as long as they did it "instead" rather than "in addition to".

Rod