CHAPTER ONE
California as we know it today was built largely on this fantasy:
That arid cities in the south could indefinitely satisfy the thirst of a growing population by importing water from the north.
The fantasy endured for a while, buoyed by water diversions from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. The largest estuary on the West Coast of the Americas, it drains 40 percent of California, transporting vital snowmelt from the Sierra Nevada across the state.
Recent events have revealed the truth: California is reaching the limit of its water supplies, and the economy and the environment are suffering for it.
The future offers even harsher realities: Global warming is drying up the snowpack and natural disasters could shatter the Delta.
Now, the state's water planners are proposing the most sweeping landscape change in America, resurrecting an audacious notion for re-plumbing this state – a controversial idea that many thought died long ago.
Central to their plan is a massive earthen canal – wider than two football fields and more than 40 miles long – that would give Southern California its first direct tap into the Sacramento River. California hasn't seen a water project of this scope in a generation.
Starting near Elk Grove, the channel would divert some of the river's flow around the fragile Delta and on to existing pumps near Tracy. From there, the river would continue to serve Los Angeles, San Diego, farms in the San Joaquin Valley, and portions of the Bay Area.
Several teams of researchers consider the canal essential to separating the state's water demand from a Delta environment under grave stress. Nine Delta fish species are being pushed toward extinction, in part, by this demand.
This new proposal, however, bears the weight of a controversial past.
California voters rejected a similar project in 1982. Then known as the peripheral canal, it won support from only eight of California's 58 counties – all in Southern California. Everybody else viewed it as a blatant water grab by the south with no advantages for the north.
The campaign touched off one of the state's ugliest water wars, and resentment lingers on both sides.
"We feel we should get the water instead of the fish," said Chuck Badger, a third-generation citrus farmer in San Diego County, where the groves are irrigated by water imported from the Delta.
"Maybe if the people down south learned how to conserve a little bit, then they wouldn't be after the water so badly," said Karen Cunningham, a cattle rancher on the Delta's Bradford Island whose livelihood is threatened by environmental improvements linked to the canal.
Those are the extremes. Between them, a new understanding is emerging. Southern Californians come to today's debate both more self-sufficient and more willing to pay for Delta restoration in return for reliable access to water. Northern Californians face a decision, likely in the next two years, about whether they are ready to share that water.
South state is curbing its water consumption
If you slice into an avocado grown in San Diego County, you're cutting into the Sacramento River. If you watch an episode of "The O.C." on television, the Sacramento River stars in all those gorgeous swimming pools.
Southern California gets at least 30 percent of its drinking and irrigation water from two aqueducts draining the Delta. Most of this water enters the Delta from the Sacramento River, the state's largest.
Though the southland has a reputation as a glutton for imported water, it has worked hard to become a better steward of this resource. Its conservation efforts now outpace those of any other region in the state.
Research conducted for the Delta Vision Blue Ribbon Task Force, appointed by the governor in 2007 to wrestle with the estuary's conflicts, found that total water consumption in Southern California – both overall and per capita – has remained flat since 1990. The population grew by about 10 percent, or 1.5 million people. But per-capita water consumption declined by 10 percent.
Call The Bee's Matt Weiser, (916) 321-1264. To comment on Delta issues, visit our reader forum at www.sacbee.com/delta.
