Editor's note: The Fresno Bee spent the summer of 2008 examining how experts and interested parties are trying to make the Delta work, and what it means to people who live in the central San Joaquin Valley.
Reporters Russell Clemings and Dennis Pollock collaborated on the research. Pollock, formerly The Bee's agriculture beat writer, has since retired.
Their report published Aug. 24, 2008. It's republished here as a service to those who are interested in following the Delta debate.
California voters rose up by a 3-to-2 margin in 1982 and torpedoed the most contentious water project in state history -- the Peripheral Canal.
The 42-mile ditch would have linked the Sacramento River to pumps near Stockton that send water from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta to thirsty Southern California and the San Joaquin Valley.
But rejection of Proposition 9 didn't settle anything. Instead, it locked state water politics, which revolve around the delta, into a chronic stalemate.
More than a quarter-century later, advocates for cities, farms and wildlife routinely duke it out in courtrooms and legislative halls. Crops on the San Joaquin Valley's west side die for lack of water. Fishing boats wait out a ban on salmon. No one is winning.
Today, some think only one thing may break the delta deadlock: an epic disaster.
The potential for such an event grows every year. Century-old levees within the delta grow ever weaker, raising prospects of a Hurricane Katrina-like catastrophe -- a flood of salty water that would submerge hundreds of square miles of farmland and historic towns like Isleton and Locke.
It might happen after an earthquake. Or it might happen as a result of erosion as sea levels rise amid global warming. No one knows when the delta will reach that tipping point. That it eventually will is viewed as certain.
"Major changes in the Delta and in California's use of Delta resources are inevitable," said a December report by Delta Vision, a two-year-old task force created by Gov. Schwarzenegger to find ways to avert a water disaster. "Current patterns of use are unsustainable, and catastrophic events, such as an earthquake, could cause dramatic changes in minutes."
The quarter-century of debate over the delta's fate since the Peripheral Canal vote has yielded no discernible progress toward a solution. Farms and urban water users regularly face cuts in their supplies to protect rare fish from the effects of pumping. About 10,000 acres of crops in the Westlands Water District were abandoned this spring after planting.
But the cuts haven't helped. Populations of salmon and delta smelt have crashed despite multiple court interventions. This year's California salmon season was closed even before it started.
The Peripheral Canal succumbed to fears that it would cost a fortune and suck the delta dry. But since its rejection, pumping from the delta to the San Joaquin Valley and Southern California has risen more than one-third anyway. In 2004, just as the fish decline became apparent, pumping reached its highest level.
The last effort to solve the delta's problems, called CalFed, took almost a decade and collapsed when Congress and the Legislature balked at writing blank checks for solutions designed to keep everyone happy.
Now, the Delta Vision task force is working on a new effort to repair the broken delta. Its biggest problem could be that every conceivable solution has its avid supporters, but also its bitter critics.
New dams, aggressive water conservation and farmland retirement are all on the table.
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