The Sacramento-San Joaquin
Delta is in ecological crisis,
according to the American
Fisheries Society and other
environmental groups.
PHOTO BY KELLY M. GROW/
CALIFORNIA DEPARTMENT
OF WATER RESOURCES
action. For the first time, water users
in the state of California would be
forced to share a meaningful portion
with the creatures that inhabit
its waterways.
Within weeks, as predicted, the
state was sued by attorneys represent-
ing the agriculture industry, munic-
ipalities including the City of San
Francisco and several environmental
groups. Consequently, there has been
no move to enforce the standards
that the board had mandated. On the
ground, it’s almost as though the his-
toric vote had never happened.
Fish out of water?
California’s great rivers, the Sacra-
mento, San Joaquin and American,
are not rivers in the original sense
of the word. Their f low is artificially
controlled through one of the world’s
most extensive series of dams, reser-
voirs and canals. From the moment
they arrive in the Central Valley, all
three f low through channels cut by
the Army Corps of Engineers. If not
for all of this plumbing, these rivers
would be broadly meandering streams
and marshlands in winter and spring,
and trickling creeks most summers.
Instead, they resemble large canals
f lowing through what had been their
main channels — although they have
resurrected some of their wildness
over the decades. This vast system of
damming and channeling, for f lood
control and irrigation, is the founda-
tion upon which Californian civiliza-
tion is built.
This massive triumph of science
and engineering, which helped build
the world’s fifth largest economy, also
wiped out 95 percent of the riparian
habitat California’s native wildlife
relied on for survival, according to
the UC Davis Center for Watershed
Sciences. Now, the Sacramento-San
Joaquin Delta — the largest estuary
on the West Coast — is in ecological
crisis. According to many studies, in-
cluding one by the American Fisheries
Society, the Delta’s once-abundant
fishery is in the midst of a decades-
long collapse. A 2008 Center for
Watershed Sciences study showed
that the iconic chinook salmon was
teetering on the edge of extinction,
and the steelhead trout was in danger
of vanishing from the state’s rivers
and streams. Recent studies show
the dire situation in the Delta has
gotten worse. As a result, California’s
once-thriving fishing industry has
been in steep decline.
And now, folks on both sides of the
fish-versus-farms fight are hoping a
bold new scientific and engineering
effort similar to the state’s great water
projects can undo the damage.
For decades, the California water
debate revolved around one metric:
unimpeded f low, which is the amount
of water in the river and streams. The
fish-versus-farms fight is a conf lict
over that one commodity, with the
advocates for the fish arguing that the
state’s agriculture industry is largely
responsible for a coming extinction.
At the Water Board meetings in 2018,
countless conservationists attacked
the very idea of sending this scarce
resource to the southern San Joaquin
Valley so farmers could grow crops for
the global market.
May 2020 | comstocksmag.com
49