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Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta becomes water war’s front line

Posted by: Maven on March 22, 2009 at 8:24 am

From the Press-Enterprise:

Bumping along a rutted levee road in his pickup, Steve Mello surveys some of the 3,100 acres he and his son farm in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. The sinking sun warms the landscape to shades of gold and pink, and Mello’s fingers trace the upward arc of sandhill cranes, geese and egrets abandoning their evening meal in an old corn field. Mello, 53, took over this land from his father, who started as a field hand.

More than a century before, farmers carved the Delta from a swamp. They built earthen levees to protect crops from the rivers’ rising tides, pushed inward with saltwater from nearby San Francisco Bay.

Little did those early settlers know, California’s modern-day struggle for water would zero in on this verdant estuary along Interstate 5, just south of Sacramento. This triangular slice of land, a checkerboard of green and brown fields dotted with quaint farmhouses and serpentine rivers and sloughs, is the cornerstone of the state’s fresh-water system.

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March 22, 2009 · Filed Under Delta Issues

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