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Tuesday’s top of the scroll: Delta progress glacially slow, governor lacks an integrated water policy, task force says

Posted by: Maven on June 2, 2009 at 8:08 am

From the San Francisco Chronicle:

A panel tapped two years ago by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to revive the ailing Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta issued the administration an “incomplete” grade Monday on the progress made in completing the group’s list of recommendations. The seven-member Delta Vision Foundation argued that, despite increasing pressures on the state’s water system, the state has failed to start new water facilities, restore battered ecosystems or improve the 1,100 miles of earthen levees that protect scores of islands within the confluence of California’s two largest rivers.

At Monday’s meeting in Sacramento, the foundation said the state must move aggressively to solve the system’s myriad problems. “The economy and environment are on the brink of collapse,” said Sunne Wright McPeak, a member of the panel and president of the California Emerging Technology Fund. “This crisis is so great it requires immediate action.”

More from the San Francisco Chronicle by clicking here.

From Stockton’s Record:

Little or no progress has been made on four of the task force’s seven broad goals for the Delta, the foundation charged.

The governor has never directly responded to those goals and lacks an integrated water policy, while there seems little chance of developing “coherent” legislation to advance the goals, according to Monday’s report.

“The problem is the choices are tough, painful and political,” said Phil Isenberg, former Sacramento mayor and chairman of the task force. “If this were easy to solve, it would have been solved in the last 30 to 40 years.” But, he said, the urgency of the state’s water woes call for a more aggressive approach.

You can read the full text of this article from The Record by clicking here.

A spokesperson for the Governor says things are happening, but just not in the public’s view, according to this article from the Bakersfield Californian:

The governor isn’t ignoring them, said Joe Grindstaff, the state’s deputy director for water policy and director of the CALFED Bay-Delta Program. “There’s a lot happening, but it’s not always the kinds of things that everybody on the outside would see,” Grindstaff said. “But (the delta) is something that the governor has been committed to for a long time.”

The strategic plan called for investment in infrastructure and better planning to balance the needs of competing interests such as farmers already parched by a drought and environmentalists anxious to protect the delta smelt and other threatened species in the region.

There are at least 16 major bills working their way through the state Legislature that address components of the water system.

Isenberg said he’s worried there will be a “30-hour frenzy at the end of the session to hammer out consensus and work out inconsistencies.”

Click here to read the full text of this article from the Bakersfield Californian.

You can read the press release from the Delta Vision Foundation by clicking here.

June 2, 2009 · Filed Under Delta Issues

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