Time To Solve Problems Of California's Delta Is Now

29 February 2008 - 9:00am

The largest estuary in the West, the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, has been in trouble for many years. Yet policy-makers have been unable or unwilling to undertake major projects. That may change in 2008.

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"Ecological warning bells and buzzers have been going off so continuously and for so long in the Delta that they’ve taken on the quality of blaring car alarms in a congested urban neighborhood: part of the background noise, ignored by passers-by even though they’re loud enough to wake the dead," writes California Planning & Development Report's John Krist.

"But there’s a good chance that 2008 will be the year, after more than a decade of policy paralysis, that California finally responds in a comprehensive and pragmatic way to the Delta alarms."

Most important is a federal judge's ruling that curtails water pumping from the Delta to protect fish, a decision that could lead to water rationing, fallow farm fields and larger water bills. Those impacts could force real action on the Delta.

Source: California Planning & Development Report, February 28, 2008