Water Education Foundation
This is just one post in the Delta Issues Category
Click here to view all posts

Going dry? Peripheral canal is needed; “the state has no leeway to abandon a vital water supply”

Posted by: Maven on December 18, 2008 at 2:10 pm

From the Riverside Press-Enterprise, this editorial

New rules to protect an endangered fish only highlight the pressing need for a channel to send water around the troubled Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. Leaving the state’s primary water supply tangled in the delta’s environmental troubles is neither realistic nor wise.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service on Monday released new regulations to protect the endangered delta smelt. A federal judge last year ordered the agency to craft the new rules, and slashed water exports from the delta to protect the fish. The new regulations would keep that approach, cutting exports by 20 percent to 30 percent on average, and perhaps as much as 50 percent in dry years.

Water from Northern California flows into the delta, and then the State Water Project and the federal Central Valley Project pump the delta water to cities and farms. Delta smelt get caught in the pumps those systems use. So cutting exports reduces pumping — and the danger to the fish.

But there are better options for addressing the delta’s woes than depriving the state of badly needed water. Separating the water supplies used by the rest of the state from the delta would remove an environmental threat, while ensuring reliable water deliveries. Voters rejected such a “peripheral canal” in 1982, but the deteriorating conditions in the delta require reviving the idea.

Read more of this editorial from the Press-Enterprise by clicking here.

December 18, 2008 · Filed Under Delta Issues

Comments

Leave a Reply