[env-trinity] SF Chron Op-Ed by Spreck Rosekrans

[Byron Leydecker]

Environmental Defense Fund's Spreck Rosekrans' Op-Ed on Delta.  Spreck also
is a member of current unchartered Trinity Adaptive Management Working Group
(TAMWG), the Trinity River Restoration Program's stakeholders' group.

 

The delta's wake-up call

Spreck Rosekrans

Monday, November 3, 2008

 

Wake up, California. Do not hit the snooze button again!

Images

 
<http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/object/article?f=/c/a/2008/11/03/EDJF13S5TP.D
TL&o=0>
<http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/object/article?f=/c/a/2008/11/03/EDJF13S5TP.D
TL&o=0> View Larger Image 

It's been clear for decades that the San Francisco Bay-Delta estuary is in
peril. The largest estuary on the West Coast is suffering - from
ever-increasing water diversions, pollution and invasive species - to the
point where scientists talk openly about the extinction of entire fish
species. It is clear that potential failure of the delta's fragile levee
system threatens delta communities and could disrupt the water system that
supplies part of the drinking water to 23 million Californians and much of
California's agricultural lands as well. 

Last Friday, the governor's Delta Vision Task Force released its strategic
plan addressing the bay-delta's ecosystem and water-supply problems. The
plan represents a clear-eyed break with the past. The task force recognizes
that protecting the environment of the delta is just as important as
providing reliable water supplies to cities and farms. The task force urges
California to base its water future in the reality that water is a limited
resource, that enormous water diversions have adverse consequences, and that
ecosystem collapse is not an acceptable option. 

The Delta Vision report offered by the task force emphasizes the urgent need
for expanded habitat and freshwater flows to restore salmon and other
decimated fisheries. Its recommendations for improving water-use efficiency,
eliminating disincentives for sustainable groundwater management and
encouraging sales of water between willing buyers and sellers, so long as
local communities are not harmed, are long overdue. 

The task force's recommendations for a peripheral canal raise questions from
both an environmental and a financial perspective. We understand that a
canal would enable continued delivery of water from the Sacramento Valley to
cities and farms further south, even in the event of a levee failure. But
the canal would vastly diminish the flow of freshwater into the delta. The
task force's vision does not include a plan for assuring that its design and
operation would protect not only salmon and other fisheries, but delta
agriculture and communities as well. 

We are also concerned by the plan's recommendations to pursue additional
dams, in part because recent proposals would build them at taxpayer expense
without any clear understanding as to how the additional water supply would
be distributed. Recent history has shown that when water agencies pay for
their own supply projects, they usually find alternative investments such as
conservation, groundwater management and cleanup, and purchases from willing
sellers to be more cost-effective investments than new dams and reservoirs.

Ultimately, success or failure will depend on whether agencies, the
California Legislature and communities can work together effectively. We are
intrigued by the task force's recommendations for agency reform - including
a new council to govern the Delta Vision's coequal goals of water supply and
environmental restoration - though simply adding one more agency could be
counterproductive if not done right. 

The Delta Vision plan now moves to the governor and the Legislature. To
avoid the mistakes of the past, they must build on the foundation of balance
between the ecosystem and water supply. We urge lawmakers to spend taxpayer
dollars only to achieve tangible public benefits. Further subsidies are
likely to continue the inefficient distribution of water that has led
California to its famously costly and fruitless water wars.

The Delta Vision report is far from perfect, but ignoring it would put both
the delta and California's water supply at risk. If we hit that snooze
button, the next wake-up call might come too late.

Spreck Rosekrans is a senior analyst with the Environmental Defense Fund in
San Francisco and a member of the Delta Vision Stakeholder Coordination
Group. To read the Delta Vision report, go to links.sfgate.com/ZFGO

 

Byron Leydecker, JCT, Chair

Friends of Trinity River

PO Box 2327

Mill Valley, CA 94942-2327

415 383 4810 

415 519 4810 cell

bwl3 at comcast.net

bleydecker at stanfordalumni.org

www.fotr.org 

 

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