Delta panel urges California canal without legislative, voter OK
By: Matt Weiser

A panel of state leaders is calling for California to begin building a canal to divert water around the Delta by 2011, without approval from lawmakers or voters.

The final report released late Friday by the Delta Vision Committee, made up of five state Cabinet secretaries, thrusts the controversial canal into the top tier of California political battles.

The canal would divert a portion of the Sacramento River around the Delta in order to protect a freshwater supply serving 25 million Californians from earthquakes, floods and sea level rise. It is a modern-day version of the peripheral canal rejected by voters in 1982.

Natural Resources Secretary Mike Chrisman, chairman of the committee, asserts that the state has the authority under existing laws to build the canal. The price tag is at least $15 billion, and many water agencies that would benefit have said they would pay the bill.

"We think it's a reasonable goal to set," Chrisman said of the 2011 construction target. "We don't need the Legislature to do that. We already have that authority. Some members of the Legislature don't agree."

Legislative leaders were engaged in budget negotiations with the governor Friday night and could not be reached for comment.

The committee's 19-page report contains many other recommendations to improve habitat and water supply in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. But these are certain to be overshadowed by the controversial canal.

For instance, the committee also recommends that the Department of Fish and Game develop minimum stream flows for Delta tributaries to protect fishery habitat, a long-sought goal of conservationists. But the deadline for that task is 2012 – after canal construction presumably has started.

Delta residents and environmental groups fear a canal would drain the estuary of essential freshwater supplies, altering the habitat and rendering Delta islands unfit for farming.

"We think they're pulling the plug on the Delta way too early," said Barbara Barrigan-Parrilla, campaign director of Restore the Delta, a coalition of environmental groups and landowners. "It's going to end up being tied up in litigation."

The committee's report, released two days after a deadline set in state law, finalizes earlier recommendations by the Delta Vision Task Force. The governor-appointed task force – a larger body – met for two years. The committee was charged with reviewing the task force findings and producing final recommendations for the governor and Legislature.

The Delta is the largest estuary on the West Coast of the Americas and California's most important water supply. In addition to serving cities from the Napa Valley to San Diego, it also irrigates nearly 3 million acres of farmland.

The state and federal governments operate two massive diversion systems to move Delta water throughout the state. But those diversions have been sharply curtailed over the past two years by court and administrative rulings to protect declining fisheries.

This, and two years of drought, have brought economic hardship to Delta-dependent water consumers.

The Delta is also at risk from natural disasters. Recent studies estimate there is a 60 percent chance by 2030 that multiple Delta islands will fail simultaneously from earthquakes, floods or sea level rise. This could cripple water diversions.

The committee proposes a so-called "dual conveyance" canal system. This involves a separate earthen canal around the Delta, with an intake somewhere south of Sacramento, and a "through Delta" canal formed by bolstering existing levees.

The committee calls this the most flexible option.

Phil Isenberg, a former Sacramento mayor and legislator who chaired the task force, said the state would be "performing a miracle" to start building a Delta canal by 2011.

Isenberg had not seen the committee's final report. But it adopted every proposal from his task force except one.

The task force recommended a new policymaking council to bring cohesion to the more than 200 agencies that manage the 740,000-acre estuary in a haphazard fashion. It viewed this as a key initial step before starting major waterworks and habitat projects.

But the committee opted to delay the governance question while starting work in other areas, including canal planning.

"I think it's too bad they didn't make a recommendation on that," Isenberg said. "I'm not shocked, but it's too bad because everyone in the puzzle knows you can't fit the pieces together without a governance solution."

The committee delegates a governance decision to a proposed Delta Policy Group, consisting of state Cabinet secretaries and one representative for the five Delta counties.

This group would spend another year developing a final plan to govern the Delta. Chrisman said this would likely not result in a new governing entity as proposed by the task force, but instead would modify powers vested in existing state agencies.

Next steps for the Delta depend largely on the ability of the governor and Legislature to work together on solutions.

Many of the committee's recommendations require new laws. Those that don't – including, perhaps, a canal – still could be obstructed by legislators or voters through laws or lawsuits that raised financial or legal barriers.