Comparing Futures for the Sacramento - San Joaquin Delta

Preface

preface One gains nothing . . . by starting out with the question, “What is acceptable?”And in the process of answering it, one gives away the important things, as a rule, and loses any chance to come up with an effective, let alone with the right, answer. peter f. drucker (1967),The Effective Executive In the American West, and much of the world, the golden era of water development is over. No longer can dams, diversions, canals, levees, dikes, and ditches be built without regard for the environment.Today’s landscapes are saturated with water infrastructure and human land uses. Often, costs of this infrastructure have escalated beyond their benefits. In particular, natural ecosystems have been reduced to small remnants of their historical extent. As these ecosystems have declined, their value has increased, to a point where conflicts among diverse, vested interest groups have become highly visible and often seemingly irresolvable. As the costs of expanding water infrastructure increase dramatically,additional water supply and flood reduction benefits from new projects are often modest. Advances in water use efficiency, groundwater banking, water treatment, floodplain management, and water markets are typically more effective from both economic and environmental perspectives, particularly when integrated with existing infrastructure. In California, a remarkable transition in water management has occurred as these advances in water operations and water use efficiency substitute for major infrastructure expansions. This combination of sound infrastructure and creative management serves both a growing economy and the growing desire to protect the natural environment. xi Yet all is not well. Water problems are always changing. In California, demands for better water management continue to grow, diversify, and challenge a water system magnificently conceived almost a century ago for more limited purposes. The environment continues to deteriorate largely as a result of human activities, as indicated by declining native fish populations. And external forces (climate change and sea-level rise),as well as accumulated effects of long-term problems (land subsidence of peat soils, salinization of irrigated soils in arid regions, nitrate pollution of groundwater ,and land use effects on habitats) are pushing aquatic ecosystems into perilous conditions and threatening regional economies. This book examines an issue central to California’s strategic water balancing problem: how to move the Sacramento–San Joaquin Delta to a more sustainable and desirable state. The Delta, together with San Francisco Bay,forms the largest estuary on the west coast of the Americas and is the largest single source in California’s water supply system. The Delta faces inevitable changes that make present water policies unsustainable. Rising sea level, continued land subsidence, earthquakes, invasive species, and a worsening climate for floods are among the changes that will overwhelm current Delta management for local agriculture and statewide water supply. With major undesirable consequences foreseen for almost all stakeholder interests, current Delta management implies its own demise. This book is the result of a true multidisciplinary examination of the Delta over the past three years. The authors include two economists (Ellen Hanak and Richard Howitt), two engineers (William Fleenor and Jay Lund),two biologists (Peter Moyle andWilliam Bennett),and a geologist (Jeffrey Mount), all of whom have a long and diverse history of involvement in California water issues. The book is based on extensive investigations and analysis conducted over a three-year period, including two major reports and ten technical reports published by the Public Policy Institute of California. We start from the premise that no matter what choices society makes, the Delta of tomorrow will become very different from today. Its static, traditional infrastructure and management are not serving California well. We then address the broad questions: Can a Delta ecosystem be created that sustains desirable species while also maintaining a substantial supply of water for human use? Can California actually manage such a profound transformation? We show that rational, scientifically-supported, and cost pre face xii effective solutions are available. However, without leadership and longterm thinking, we suspect that the Delta will instead fail into some less desirable environmental and economic condition. With this book we present our technical consensus. We think this work demonstrates that independent research conducted in universities and research institutes can help resolve some of the world’s real problems.We hope readers will also get a glimpse of the great intellectual thrill and satisfaction that we, a diverse group of engaged scholars, found in working together on challenging...