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Editorial: Finding a way in Delta
Published 12:00 am PDT Tuesday, March 25, 2008
Story appeared in EDITORIALS section, Page B6
It takes a learned captain to navigate the sloughs and channels of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. Even tougher is finding a large expanse of public land open for hunting, fishing and bird watching.
A bill in California's Legislature could change that.
Assemblywoman Lois Wolk, D-Davis, is authoring legislation for the state to purchase a trio of Delta properties – Prospect Island, the Little Holland Tract and Liberty Island – which are now owned by the federal government and a nonprofit land trust.
Wolk's Assembly Bill 2502 would transform these tracts into a state recreation area, with an endowment fund to help restore marshes and levees.
The time is right for this farsighted project. Surveys show that salmon and Delta smelt are in trouble, and lack of habitat may be at least part of the reason. Restoration of old freshwater marshes could go a long way toward helping fish and various waterfowl while also providing benefits for flood control and recreation.
To top it off, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation remains highly motivated to unload Prospect Island and the Little Holland Tract. Both properties sit to the west of Thornton, straddling two sides of the Sacramento Deep Water Ship Channel.
Prospect Island was the site of a stinky scandal last year after bureau contractors pumped water from the interior, killing thousands of fish. Liberty Island, which is owned by the Trust for Public Land, was flooded in 1998. It, like the Little Holland Tract, is already rich with wildlife and would benefit from work on its marshes and sloughs.
Wolk's bill is still a work in progress. An unanswered question is how she would pay for an endowment fund to finance restoration and maintenance of the recreation area. Wolk hopes water contractors would contribute funds as a way to mitigate their impact from diverting water from the Delta – an idea that deserves to be explored. The Delta might seem like a maze, but collaboration about its future doesn't need to end in a dead end.
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