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<p class=MsoNormal><b><font size=4 face=Tahoma><span style='font-size:14.0pt;
font-family:Tahoma;font-weight:bold'>EDITORIAL:<o:p></o:p></span></font></b></p>
<p style='margin:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt'><b><font size=4 face=Tahoma><span
style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:Tahoma;font-weight:bold'>Delta Blues<o:p></o:p></span></font></b></p>
<p style='margin:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt'><b><font size=4 face=Tahoma><span
style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:Tahoma;font-weight:bold'>San Francisco
Chronicle – 7/17/05<o:p></o:p></span></font></b></p>
<p style='margin:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt'><b><font size=4 face=Tahoma><span
style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:Tahoma;font-weight:bold'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></b></p>
<p style='margin:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt'><font size=4 face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font-size:14.0pt'>The news last week that the Bush administration
changed scientists' conclusions about how increased water pumping from the
Delta would affect endangered salmon and steelhead was disturbing, but not
surprising. The Bush administration has a history of allowing political
considerations to trump science. In the history of the Delta, politics rules,
too. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p style='margin:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt'><font size=4 face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font-size:14.0pt'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p style='margin:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt'><font size=4 face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font-size:14.0pt'>What most Californians know of the Sacramento-San
Joaquin Delta is its landscape -- a mysterious backwater of waving reeds,
waterfowl and asparagus fields -- and its place in state politics as the
battlefield for the state's water wars. Remember Gov. Jerry Brown's fight to
push through the <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:PlaceName w:st="on">Peripheral</st1:PlaceName>
<st1:PlaceType w:st="on">Canal</st1:PlaceType></st1:place>? <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p style='margin:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt'><font size=4 face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font-size:14.0pt'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p style='margin:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt'><font size=4 face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font-size:14.0pt'>The courts will have to sort out the legitimacy of 280
long-term federal water contracts with agricultural users for 1 million acre
feet more than the water project can deliver safely. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p style='margin:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt'><font size=4 face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font-size:14.0pt'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p style='margin:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt'><font size=4 face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font-size:14.0pt'>What is less clear is who will sort out the future of
the Delta. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p style='margin:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt'><font size=4 face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font-size:14.0pt'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p style='margin:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt'><font size=4 face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font-size:14.0pt'>The stakeholders -- industry, water agencies, state
and federal governments and the environmental community -- agree on this much:
The status quo is unsustainable. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p style='margin:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt'><font size=4 face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font-size:14.0pt'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p style='margin:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt'><font size=4 face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font-size:14.0pt'>"Reliance on the Delta as a primary water feature
of the state is doomed," said Jeffrey Mount, a UC Davis geologist who has
studied the Delta and its problems. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p style='margin:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt'><font size=4 face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font-size:14.0pt'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p style='margin:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt'><font size=4 face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font-size:14.0pt'>With the demand for water increasing and the Delta's
100-year-old plumbing system in disrepair, the stakes are enormous. An
earthquake, a flood or a levee failure that undermines other levees, would be a
human and economic disaster the state could ill afford. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p style='margin:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt'><font size=4 face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font-size:14.0pt'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p style='margin:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt'><font size=4 face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font-size:14.0pt'>The stakeholders have embraced the fact that <st1:place
w:st="on"><st1:State w:st="on">California</st1:State></st1:place> must rethink
how to maintain and deliver good-quality water to two-thirds of the state's
population. Each group is cautiously starting to roll out proposals for a new
water world that attempt to avoid the buzz saw of the old water politics and
secure a sustainable future. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p style='margin:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt'><font size=4 face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font-size:14.0pt'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p style='margin:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt'><font size=4 face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font-size:14.0pt'>The Association of California Water Agencies, a
consortium representing 95 percent of the state's water authorities, has
unveiled its blueprint for <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:State w:st="on">California</st1:State></st1:place>
water, "No Time to Waste" (<a href="http://www.acwa.com"
title="http://www.acwa.com">www.acwa.com</a>). <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p style='margin:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt'><font size=4 face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font-size:14.0pt'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p style='margin:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt'><font size=4 face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font-size:14.0pt'>Assemblyman John Laird, D-Santa Cruz, has introduced
AB1200, legislation backed by the Sierra Club and a Silicon Valley industry
group, which calls for a comprehensive but vaguely defined study of the impacts
of climate change and earthquake risk on the Delta levees, lands, water rights,
fish and the environment of the rivers outside the Delta. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p style='margin:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt'><font size=4 face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font-size:14.0pt'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p style='margin:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt'><font size=4 face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font-size:14.0pt'>The state Department of Water Resources is preparing a
similar, but more Delta-centric, report on the risks to the levee system and to
the state economy. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p style='margin:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt'><font size=4 face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font-size:14.0pt'>What can't happen is nothing. Politics can't impede
taking action. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p style='margin:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt'><font size=4 face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font-size:14.0pt'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p style='margin:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt'><font size=4 face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font-size:14.0pt'>The Delta ecosystem is failing. State biologists have
acknowledged that the Delta's open-water fish populations are mysteriously
collapsing. Scientists don't know why the populations of Delta smelt, threadfin
shad and juvenile striped bass, as well as copepods, a tiny organism on which
larger fish feed, have declined to the lowest levels recorded. They are
investigating three possibilities: pesticides, invasive species and increased
water pumping. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p style='margin:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt'><font size=4 face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font-size:14.0pt'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p style='margin:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt'><font size=4 face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font-size:14.0pt'>CalFed, the decade-old state-federal collaboration
designed to reconcile the thorniest of the Delta conflicts over water supply
and the environment, has faltered, too. "For all the dollars spent by
CalFed, there is little to show for it," says state Sen. Michael J.
Machado, D-Linden. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p style='margin:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt'><font size=4 face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font-size:14.0pt'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p style='margin:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt'><font size=4 face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font-size:14.0pt'>Forging a path to the future will take leadership. We
need our leaders to tell the U.S. Department of the Interior and the Bureau of
Reclamation that they can't ignore environmental law when renewing lucrative
25- and 40-year federal contracts for subsidized <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:State
w:st="on">California</st1:State></st1:place> water. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p style='margin:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt'><font size=4 face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font-size:14.0pt'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p style='margin:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt'><font size=4 face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font-size:14.0pt'>It will take leadership to shift the political debate
from water delivery to water quality, and that means water quality for people,
for the fisheries, for cities and industry, and for agriculture and the
environment. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p style='margin:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt'><font size=4 face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font-size:14.0pt'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p style='margin:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt'><font size=4 face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font-size:14.0pt'>It will take also leadership to convince the
stakeholders to look at the benefits of the Delta collectively and share in the
cost of maintaining the Delta's plumbing system collectively. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p style='margin:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt'><font size=4 face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font-size:14.0pt'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p style='margin:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt'><font size=4 face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font-size:14.0pt'>And it will take leadership to engineer a plan that
protects the well- being of all <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:State w:st="on">California</st1:State></st1:place>,
not just the political interests of a few. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p style='margin:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt'><font size=4 face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font-size:14.0pt'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p style='margin:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt'><font size=4 face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font-size:14.0pt'>If Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger wants, as he has said,
to leave a legacy as the environmental governor, this is the issue and this is
the time. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p style='margin:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt'><font size=4 face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font-size:14.0pt'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=4 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
14.0pt'>A troubled landscape <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=4 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
14.0pt'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p style='margin:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt'><font size=4 face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font-size:14.0pt'>The Delta is the largest estuary on the West Coast. It
is also a rich agricultural region, a recreational area and the plumbing for
the state water system that serves 23 million Californians. Aging
infrastructure, increased water demands and warming temperatures are changing
the Delta in ways that will affect the quality and the delivery of water in the
future. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p style='margin:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt'><font size=4 face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font-size:14.0pt'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p style='margin:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt'><font size=4 face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font-size:14.0pt'>Crumbling levees: There are 1,600 miles of levees in
the Delta, most of which are privately owned. Some date back to the 1850s. The
land they surround is subsiding, potentially destabilizing the levees. Failure
of one levee could jeopardize the integrity of others. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p style='margin:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt'><font size=4 face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font-size:14.0pt'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p style='margin:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt'><font size=4 face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font-size:14.0pt'>Climate change: Warming temperatures are raising ocean
levels and pushing salty water further into the Delta. The state Department of
Water Resources estimates that to reduce saltiness and prevent flooding, it
will require raising the height of some 1,100 miles of levees at least 6 inches
or more. A warmer climate also could diminish the Sierra snowpack -- <st1:place
w:st="on"><st1:State w:st="on">California</st1:State></st1:place>'s natural
water-storage system -- and increase runoff in winter, when there's little
storage capacity. The resulting floods could undermine levees and harm water
quality. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p style='margin:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt'><font size=4 face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font-size:14.0pt'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p style='margin:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt'><font size=4 face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font-size:14.0pt'>Disruption: UC Davis geologist Jeffrey Mount predicts
a 2 in 3 chance within the next 50 years of a catastrophic event -- an
earthquake or a major flood -- that would curtail or prevent the delivery of
water, maybe for months, with disastrous consequences for the <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:State
w:st="on">California</st1:State></st1:place> economy. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p style='margin:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt'><font size=4 face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font-size:14.0pt'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p style='margin:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt'><font size=4 face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font-size:14.0pt'>Sources: UC Davis; Association of California Water
Agencies; State Department of Water Resources <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><st1:PersonName w:st="on"><em><i><font size=3 color=gray
face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt;color:gray'>Byron
Leydecker</span></font></i></em></st1:PersonName><em><i><font color=gray
face="Times New Roman"><span style='color:gray'>, </span></font></i></em><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><em><i><font size=3 color=gray face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font-size:12.0pt;color:gray'>Chair, Friends of <st1:place w:st="on">Trinity
River</st1:place></span></font></i></em><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><em><i><font size=3 color=gray face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font-size:12.0pt;color:gray'>Consultant, California Trout, Inc.</span></font></i></em><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><st1:address w:st="on"><st1:Street w:st="on"><em><i><font
size=3 color=gray face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt;
color:gray'>PO Box</span></font></i></em></st1:Street><em><i><font
color=gray face="Times New Roman"><span style='color:gray'> 2327</span></font></i></em></st1:address><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><st1:place w:st="on"><st1:City w:st="on"><em><i><font
size=3 color=gray face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt;
color:gray'>Mill Valley</span></font></i></em></st1:City><em><i><font
color=gray face="Times New Roman"><span style='color:gray'>, <st1:State w:st="on">CA</st1:State>
<st1:PostalCode w:st="on">94942-2327</st1:PostalCode></span></font></i></em></st1:place><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><em><i><font size=3 color=gray face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font-size:12.0pt;color:gray'>415 383 4810 ph</span></font></i></em><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><em><i><font size=3 color=gray face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font-size:12.0pt;color:gray'>415 383 9562 fx</span></font></i></em><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><em><i><u><font size=3 color=blue face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font-size:12.0pt;color:blue'><a href="mailto:bwl3@comcast.net">bwl3@comcast.net</a></span></font></u></i></em><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><em><i><font size=3 color=blue face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font-size:12.0pt;color:blue'><a
href="mailto:bleydecker@stanfordalumni.org">bleydecker@stanfordalumni.org</a><u>
</u></span></font><font color=gray><span style='color:gray'>(secondary)</span></font></i></em><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><em><i><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font-size:12.0pt'><a href="http://www.fotr.org">http://www.fotr.org</a></span></font></i></em><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><em><i><font size=3 color=blue face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font-size:12.0pt;color:blue'><a href="http://caltrout.org">http://caltrout.org</a></span></font></i></em><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'> </span><o:p></o:p></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
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