Tale of Two Deltas

When I first started to closely follow the water issues surrounding the California Delta, one of the first items I read was by Dr. Jeffrey Mount of U.C. Davis Center for Watershed Studies. (Various stories are around. In this one on MSNBC Dr. Mount makes the point.)

Yesterday, a Federal Judge put a large portion of the blame directly on the Army Corps of Engineers.

"It is the court's opinion that the negligence of the Corps, in this instance by failing to maintain the MRGO properly, was not policy, but insouciance, myopia and short-sightedness," U.S. District Court Judge Stanwood Duval Jr. wrote in his lengthy ruling, referring to the Mississippi River-Gulf Outlet canal.

"For over 40 years, the Corps was aware that the Reach II levee protecting Chalmette and the Lower Ninth Ward was going to be compromised by the continued deterioration of the MRGO ... The Corps had an opportunity to take a myriad of actions to alleviate this deterioration or rehabilitate this deterioration and failed to do so. Clearly, the expression 'talk is cheap' applies here."

When I look at the water legislation passed recently by the California Legislature, and signed with great fanfare by our Greenwashed Gov, I have to think that no lessons were learned, no effective actions were taken and the levees are in worse shape today than they were when Dr. Mount was quoted on MSNBC.

It will take years before the Sacramento Bureaucracy admits that this effort, just like the Feinstein crafted CALFED program from the 90's, is another failure. I only hope that the levees in the Delta do not themselves fail before then. If that happens, we know who is culpable. Calfifornia Department of Water Resources, California State Legislature and, lest I forget, the Army Corps of Engineers.

Once more wading through the delta quagmire

Unfortunately the quagmire in really in the politics of the Delta. I had missed this NPR program until reminded of it while reading Alex Breitler's blog at the Stockton Record.

[Dr. Jeffrey] Mount says climate change is conspiring against the fragile balance at work in the delta. In order to serve millions of Californians, the salty water of the San Francisco Bay must be kept away from the pumps that bring fresh water to cities and farms. It requires constant management and enough fresh water at all times to push the salt water back.

Dr. Jeffrey Mount is the Director of the Center for Watershed Management at UC Davis. He was, at one time, a member of the California State Reclamation Board. This agency has the following mission.

• To control flooding along the Sacramento and San Joaquin Rivers and their tributaries in cooperation with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.



• To cooperate with various agencies of the federal, State and local governments in establishing, planning, constructing, operating, and maintaining flood control works.



• To maintain the integrity of the existing flood control system and designated floodways through the Board's regulatory authority by issuing permits for encroachments.

When Dr. Mount, and other members, started to exert their authority to regulate development in flood plains, Green Governor Schwarzenegger fired them all and replaced them with developer friendly members.

Now, Schwarzenegger wants to build more dams that will provide for collection of more water without any concern for what is happening in the delta. The alternative, a Healthy Delta Community Plan, is not getting media attention. The news is always what the Governor says, what the Water Agencies say, what the California Farm Bureau says and rarely what the community says. Maybe we need a new narrative, one that tells the story of the people rather than the agencies.

Aquafornia gives us the media coverage in a nutshell. We have to begin to personalize this, to make people realize just what it will mean to meet this challenge after you strip away all of the hype.

Stockton Record on Bad Water.

Mike Fitzgerald, a featured columnist at the Stockton Record, was one journalist who attended the Restore the Delta session this past week. I have long appreciated Fitzgerald's commentary. At times it is the best thing in the Record. I even consider his characterization of Richard Pombo as "taker in chief" as being the last nail in Pombo's electoral coffin.

Fitzgerald's column today (09/32/07) is essentially a report on that session. Like Kamran Alavi's comments on the GP Cal Forum list, he was impressed by Winnemem Wintu speaker Mark Franco.

Franco's fresh take on the peripheral canal, on the dams proposed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and on water in general arises from a world view radically different from the European. But his spiritual view meshed with Nomellini's legal analysis.

"They look at water as a commodity to be bought and sold - water 'rights,' not water responsibility," Franco said of big Delta water users, "with no regard for the place that may be left dry."

Fitzgerald goes on to call attention to the great coverage by the San Diego Union-Tribune, What's Killing the Delta. That ends with a reminder from UC Davis Prof. Dr. Jeffrey Mount of what we are really doing, defining our future.

"This is not a static landscape," Mount says. "It is constantly evolving. The delta is going to be something different. And we’re in the process of deciding that."

I can not think of much that is as important to this state as getting things right on Water. It is our future life. It is our future economy. It determines how much we will pay for the food we eat and whether or not we have to get it from Chile or New Zealand.

For once, most of the main stream media seem to be getting it right. The Union-Tribune article and Fitzgerald's column linked above are right on. Mike Taugher told the unpleasant truth about our water bureaucracy in the story I linked yesterday. The LA Times Editorial on Coping with Drought was excellent. Why then, are the politicians all getting it wrong?

If there were ever a time for politicians who truly had a green ethic, that time is now. What we appear to have with Schwarzenegger and Nuñez is green-washed astroturf.