Near Placerville, long-sought park land might fall out of escrow. In the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, vital ecosystem research has been halted. And in West Sacramento, officials fear a delay in rebuilding levees.

These problems and more are piling up in the Sacramento region as California's budget crisis worsens.

This week, many nonprofits and local agencies are coming to grips with a decision Dec. 17 by an obscure state financing agency, the Pooled Money Investment Board.

The board was forced to preserve cash flow for basic government operations. It did so by freezing payment for some 2,000 projects funded by more than a half dozen voter- approved bond measures.

The funding stream will probably be restored for many projects once the governor and Legislature make a deal to resolve California's $40 billion budget deficit. But some may not be able to wait, and there's lots of fretting over how much the delay will hurt in the meantime.

The American River Conservancy was set to close escrow Dec. 31 on a 45-acre parcel near Coloma. It will become a trailhead along Salmon Falls Road for a hiking route between the river's south fork and Highway 49.

It is the last of 15 properties the conservancy has worked to string into a trail over the last 20 years.

After 18 months of grass-roots fundraising, the conservancy raised all but $40,000 of the half-million-dollar purchase price. That final morsel of funding was approved from state bond funds by the Sierra Nevada Conservancy. Now the conservancy is begging the seller for more time; it's considering borrowing money to close the gap.

"It's very frustrating because when you work with willing sellers of land, they expect these projects will be finished by a certain date," said Elena DeLacy, conservation project coordinator. "It's pretty important to us and the community, too, because they have a big stake in the project."

On Tuesday, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger highlighted a different project to keep pressure on the Legislature to solve the budget crisis. Before a phalanx of TV cameras, he stood beside a levee in Sacramento's Natomas basin. Upgrading 42 miles of Natomas levees is "one of the most critical flood protection projects in the state," he said, and warned political posturing over the budget could threaten public safety.

The Sacramento Area Flood Control Agency expects the Natomas project to cost $618 million. Until it gets federal reimbursements, the agency depends on state bond money for 70 percent of that cost.

SAFCA Executive Director Stein Buer said the project is on sound footing. But if bond funds aren't restored by March 18, it could have trouble lining up a contractor to start the massive project this spring.

"We'll make every effort to stay on track. But we cannot move forward without state bond funding," Buer said.

West Sacramento faces similar threats in its equally urgent battle to begin $400 million in levee reinforcements.

No projects have been delayed. But the city is looking for $1 million in bond reimbursements for a small project recently completed along the Sacramento River at I Street, and a much bigger state share for the rest.

"We expect to enter into cost-sharing agreements with the state, probably in March, and we're hoping it's all resolved by then," said Michael Bessette, West Sacramento flood protection manager.

As the state verges on big decisions about the future of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, research aimed at informing this process has stopped.

The CalFed Bay-Delta Program was forced to halt $16 million in bond-funded research that is part of a broad effort to restore the Delta and protect its freshwater supply.

The halted projects include an experiment involving 32,000 threatened Delta smelt, bred in a lab to learn how they are affected by water pumping. Now scientists wonder how they'll keep the fish alive.

There is also no money to conduct a scientific review of forthcoming federal rules to protect salmon from the Delta's pumping systems.

"When scientists are told to suddenly put down their tools and instruments – stop all work – it has an impact," said Judy Kelly, director of the San Francisco Estuary Project, which funds some of this work via state grants. "It's a mess, and it's a mess for a whole lot of reasons."

Call The Bee's Matt Weiser, (916) 321-1264.