The Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta is the Pacific Coast's largest estuary and a critical habitat for wildlife, as well as the state's major source of water – but it's in crisis with deteriorating levees, threats from global warming and earthquakes, and court-ordered restrictions on pumping due to water quality problems.
How often have we been given that dark picture? Countless times, and twice more this month, once in a report from the Delta Vision Task Force, appointed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to lay the basis for new water policy, and again in a state-sponsored scientific study of Delta issues.
Delta Vision recommends compromises among the countless competing ideological and economic stakeholders, better conveyance facilities and a unified system of governing water use, land use and other Delta issues, replacing dozens of agencies that have pieces of the authority.
How often have we heard that prescription for the Delta? Just about as often as we have heard the list of its ills. So does Delta Vision's vision have any greater chance of succeeding than past efforts, including one called Cal-Fed that spent about $5 billion only to fail? It would be nothing short of a miracle for two very salient reasons.
One is that the water conflict isn't really about water. As important as it may be, water is merely the battleground for the larger debate over how California should develop, especially housing, as its population grows.
There are other fronts in that battle, most notably transportation. This year's Senate Bill 375 would redirect transportation financing away from roads serving tracts of single-family homes and toward mass transit connected to higher-density development.
Water, however, is an even more powerful factor in development than transportation. Simply put – and this is now state law – a housing project cannot proceed without having a specific source of water, and the Delta's increasing unreliability for water helps major environmental groups influence development patterns.
That's why they persuaded voters 26 years ago to reject a "peripheral canal," which would have improved both the Delta environment and water supply reliability – the same solution that Delta Vision and other authorities endorse. And that brings us to the second reason why Delta Vision's report is unlikely to generate policy.
The state's water stalemate is a symptom of its chronic inability to deal with issues that arise out of a fast-growing and fast-changing society. Given the ability of any major stakeholder on any issue to block any action that it finds noxious (such as the peripheral canal in 1982), a major water policy advance would require virtual unanimity among dozens of interests. That's virtually impossible to achieve.
Ergo, don't expect Delta Vision to be any more successful than past efforts at breaking the stalemate, even as the state experiences worsening water shortages and the Delta continues to deteriorate.
Call The Bee's Dan Walters, (916) 321-1195. Back columns, www.sacbee.com/walters.
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