CHAPTER TWO

BRADFORD ISLAND -- The Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta can be a disorienting place – at once sublime and severe. The tug of that conflict is particularly strong here.

Fewer than 40 people live on Bradford Island, a 2,000-acre tract of grazing land and weathered homes on Contra Costa County's northern fringe. No roads reach here, only boats. Half of California's freshwater runoff courses by outside Bradford's fragile levees.

The island lies near the confluence of the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers, within the great estuary that weaves between them. As such, this one-time haven for methamphetamine cooks and junk collectors now finds itself wedged between environmental and political problems that threaten the state's most important water supply.

The Delta's 70 islands form a crucial part of the water system that helped make California one of the world's richest societies. Today, that plumbing is at risk.

These islands are really bowls. A century of farming and development has depleted their organic peat soils, causing some island interiors to fall more than 20 feet below sea level. If flooded, these bowls would fill with salty water from San Francisco Bay, contaminating the freshwater supply and requiring painful rationing statewide.

According to researchers, earthquakes and sea level rises anticipated in the next 30 years mean there is a 62 percent chance that a dozen or more islands will flood simultaneously. As these risks grow, such a disaster becomes a virtual certainty by 2075.

"Sooner or later, nature's going to rear up and grab at least part of it back," said Raymond Seed, a UC Berkeley civil engineering professor who diagnosed New Orleans levee failures after Hurricane Katrina.

The blow to the economy would be $40 billion or more. That's why water managers are pushing for a radical redesign of the Delta.

Panel's call for a canal alarms island residents

Seed was among seven people – liberals and conservatives, laymen and experts – appointed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to the Delta Vision Blue Ribbon Task Force. It spent nearly two years analyzing the Delta's many-faceted problems.

In a final report released in November, the panel called for a new water canal around the Delta to secure the freshwater supply, plus the restoration of 100,000 acres of land to help the Delta's troubled ecosystem.

A committee of state Cabinet secretaries will make final recommendations to the governor and Legislature later this month.

Under most any future scenario, the Delta's 150,000 residents face the biggest changes. In the next flood, some islands likely won't be rebuilt. Their economic value doesn't justify repairing levees, so they would be left flooded. Other islands might be purchased for specific restoration projects.

Though no final decisions have been made about any island, Bradford Island is among those unlikely to be saved. Local residents reject that scenario, but there's no consensus about how to respond.

"Whatever financial status I've got now, it was the island that gave it to me," said Brent Gilbert, a 64-year-old farmer and cattle rancher on Bradford Island. "I understand that Southern California needs water. But for crying out loud, let's don't let the farmer be the endangered species."

Gilbert, a Vietnam War veteran, wears a handlebar mustache and a baseball cap pulled tight against scouring winds. As levee superintendent for three decades, he saw the island through punishing storms and savored its romantic sunsets. He battled drug dealers who thrived on the island's remoteness, and squatters who trashed its shoreline with derelict vessels.

"I've got a lot of deep-rooted, personal attraction to this island, and the Delta," he said.

Delta's people are as unique as its environment

The Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta is not a true delta, a place where a river fans out to spill into the sea. Instead it's an estuary, an inland water body where ocean and fresh flows mingle.

This estuary is the biggest on the West Coast of the Americas and may be unique in the world, because it is fed by the vast floodplains of two major rivers, with San Francisco Bay standing between them and the sea.

Call The Bee's Matt Weiser, (916) 321-1264. To comment on Delta issues, visit our reader forum at www.sacbee.com/delta.