PART 1: TAKING ON WATER
Who are the players and what’s at stake?
By Ruth Dusseault • Bay City News
October 22, 2024
BARRELING DOWNHILL, FRESH snowmelt flows from the Sierra Nevada into the Sacramento River. In the wet season, high water pulses through the river into the Delta, a hidden estuary east of San Francisco, and pools before escaping to the sea through the narrow Carquinez Strait.
That tension, that outflow, must be constantly sustained in order to keep salt water out of the estuary. The Delta is the exchange point for half of California’s water supply. In the middle of the Delta are the intake pumps for the State Water Project, a 700-mile system of canals and aqueducts that carries Delta water to farms and cities in Central and Southern California. The pumps sometimes draw fish astray on their way to the sea.
Every fall, a pulse of water is released from the state and federal water reservoirs to preserve Delta smelt in the Suisun Bay, where it was hypothesized the fish species would have improved access to food supply and less stressful water temperatures. This year, the state Department of Water Resources is not sending that pulse of water, citing a model study from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service that they say makes the increased flow unnecessary and requests from the water contractors in the San Joaquin Valley and Southern California. Fisheries and environmental groups are outraged, fearing those habitat conditions are in peril.
Over the last century, water flows in the Delta have been increasingly mechanized this way, only adding to political tensions between stakeholders.
Still reeling with the trauma of the megadroughts of the 2010s, there is a rising concern at the state that with climate change and sea-level rise, a catastrophic event — like a major earthquake or storm — could bring seawater rushing into the Delta. Such an event could devastate native ecosystems, render water unusable, endanger farmland and leave 27 million people without fresh water for months.
Unlikely alliances
Several California governors since the 1960s have attempted to engineer a way for fresh water to travel across, around or under the Delta. The most recent proposal is a 45-mile tunnel, an underground gravity-fed canal designed to divert water from the Sacramento River, the largest tributary, before it enters the Delta.
In times of excess flow, it could siphon up to 6,000 cubic feet of water per second, conveying it directly to the Bethany pumps and the water agencies that depend on the state delivery system.
Of the 27 water contractors that depend on exports from the Delta, the biggest are the Kern County Water Agency, that supplies San Joaquin Valley farmers, and the Metropolitan Water District that supplies Los Angeles. None of these state water contractors have committed to help pay for the tunnel’s $20 billion construction, although some have been permitted to sell bonds and 18 have funded its research and design.
The Delta is an ancient and vital estuary, sprawling across more than a thousand square miles — almost the size of Anchorage, Alaska. This geological depression, a place where surface water and groundwater converge, was once a sea of river grasses, dotted with tree islands, similar to Florida’s Everglades, but landlocked.
Cities, farmers, tribes and salmon all hold a stake in the waters of the Delta. With the pending changes, they have formed some unlikely alliances. Farmers and environmentalists are normally on opposite ends of the water debate, but in the Delta they stand together. So do tribes and commercial fisheries, who are joining to defend salmon habitat.
Salmon in decline
The struggle of salmon reveals the impact of changes in the Delta brought by development and politics. Normally, the strong flow of the Sacramento River carries baby salmon hundreds of miles from their shallow mountain creche into the Pacific like the arms of a mother.
Scott Artis, executive director of the Golden State Salmon Association, is a vocal spokesperson for the salmon. I first met Scott at San Francisco’s Fisherman’s Wharf in the spring of 2024, where he and other fisheries were speaking out after the governor canceled salmon fishing season for the second year due to decreased populations.
“People used to say you could walk across California rivers on the backs of salmon,” Artis said. “We had millions of returns back then. Now, we’re fighting to get 200,000 fish back into the Sacramento River system.”
California’s climate has always careened between flood and drought. The Delta’s unique geological features had accommodated that flux by transfiguring from river to flood plain to grassland. And it did so in concert with the transitory life cycle of salmon, which migrate back and forth from river to sea.
“In 2023, only 106 fish returned to the Sacramento River during the spring run,” Scott said. “That’s not 106,000 — it’s 106 individual fish. It’s a complete obliteration. What caused this, the catalyst, is that the state failed to provide temperature protection for salmon eggs. And so, as a result, lethal hot water caused by excessive and unsustainable water diversions, largely just were sent to export crops, which has dramatically increased over the years.”
Scott lays much of the blame on unsustainable farming practices, specifically the expansion of almond production in the Central Valley which depends on state water deliveries. The valley used to grow a myriad of crops that could be fallowed occasionally during dry season.
“Now they have trees that need water all year round, so there’s constant water diversions that need to happen,” he said.
Salmon are listed as a threatened species by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, along with white sturgeon. Delta smelt is listed as endangered. All these species are defended under the federal law, the U.S. Endangered Species Act.
In 2023, only 106 fish returned to the Sacramento River during the spring run. That’s not 106,000 — it’s 106 individual fish. It’s a complete obliteration.
Scott Artis, director of the Golden State Salmon Association
Delta farmers and tribes argue their water rights are also not governed by the state.
Lester Maston is a native rights lawyer, who spoke to the water board at a workshop in April about native water rights that date back to the 19th century.
“There are approximately 110 Indian reservations located within the state,” he said. “The tribes have a federal right to use the surface and groundwaters that are located above, below, and which flow through their reservations. Those rights are governed by federal and tribal law, not by state law. And for most tribes within the state, that date is March 1, 1853.”
A fight over water rights
I spoke with Delta farmers like Russell Van Loben Sels, whose great-grandfather built some of the first levees along the Sacramento River.
“The year was 1914 when the Water Resources Control Board began issuing licenses to take water,” he told me. Water rights are issued by the California Water Resources Control Board, the “Water Board,” which is the enforcement arm of the state Environmental Protection Agency.
“So, people who took water before 1914, it’s argued that the Water Resources Control Board cannot curtail them,” Van Loben Sels said. He also pointed to the legacy of riparian rights. Those people who live beside a natural water course, which is about every farmer in the Delta, have a right to use that water as long as it’s for the beneficial use of Californians.
The Delta is a landscape that has turned into a constellation of islands, an upside-down logic of farms that sit below sea level, surrounded by high levee roads.
In Sacramento, I spoke to Jennifer Pierre, the general manager of the State Water Contractors at the Department of Water Resources, the agencies who will benefit from the tunnel. Despite its potential impact on the environment, she sees it as essential for securing California’s water supply.
“Our water supply is intrinsically linked to the health of the environment,” she says.
Pierre is quick to explain that the tunnel is designed to take only excess water from the Sacramento River during high flows, diverting it before it can flood the Delta. Still, she admits that the tunnel, on its own, won’t save the Delta. It’s a tool for water management, but not a solution to the larger problem of climate change.
You can’t pump unless you override the existing water rights and protections for endangered species. So, why spend billions of dollars on something we can’t use?
Congressman John Garamendi, D-Fairfield
Before building the tunnel, the California Department of Water Resources must still obtain several permits, including an updated water rights permit that includes a second point of diversion.
“The tunnel won’t be used much,” says Congressman John Garamendi, D-Fairfield, whose 8th District represents the Delta. “You can’t pump unless you override the existing water rights and protections for endangered species. So, why spend billions of dollars on something we can’t use?”
His fear — and the fear of many farmers, tribes and environmentalists — is that once the tunnel is built, political pressure will change the laws. Water rights, which date back over a century in the Delta, might be rewritten to favor the growing populations in the San Joaquin Valley and Southern California.
Audio credits
Additional audio licensed under Creative Commons public domain: SwayingKeysRev1 by Bigvegie, CC0; lowgrowl_drift.wav by wgwgsa, CC0; Beeps & Brakes ~Construction Site Trucks by Bon_Vivant_Pictures, CC0; guitar by Nick Wenner.
This series is a production of Bay City News, presented in collaboration with Climate One and Northern California Public Media. For more on this story and other news in the Greater Bay Area, visit localnewsmatters.org.