Editorial: Digging into the problem
Peripheral canal proposal aims to fast-track idea that won't go away

A recommendation to set a timetable to start digging a ditch around the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta - a far-fetched idea with more lives than a cat - should be a warning to north Valley residents that there are those who couldn't care less about the health of the fragile estuary.

The so-called Delta Vision task force, a Cabinet-level group, last week sent its recommendation to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, a supporter of a peripheral canal project.

Basically, such a canal would take water from the Sacramento River at Hood and route it around the Delta to huge pumps that would then shoot it south.

All this would be done without legislative or voter approval.

There are at least two troubling things about this:

First, despite 20 months of study, the Delta Vision group seems to have given short-shrift to study after study that has shown the Delta ecosystem to be under threat. Fish populations are collapsing. Foreign species are invading. Water quality is declining. Flood risks - because of aging and failure-prone levees - are growing.

Second, how can we possibly pay for such a project, estimated by the state Department of Water Resources at from $4.2 billion to $7.2 billion, when the Delta itself is in such terrible shape? The Delta Vision group suggests new water bonds for the canal, but there is no way to build a canal and repair the miles and miles of levees, too.

About two of every three Californians - about 25 million people - depend on the Delta for water. Agriculture, especially in the south San Joaquin Valley, is utterly dependent on its water. Engineering studies indicate that the simultaneous failure of just two levees - and there are hundreds of miles of them containing the Delta - could bring catastrophic floods to Stockton and Sacramento. That, in addition to interrupting water supplies for millions of residents.

So the question is not if something should be done, but what should be done. And at this point, decreasing water flows through the Delta, exactly what the governor's "alternative conveyance" would do, seems to do nothing to address the health of the Delta itself. What it does do is sate the thirst, at least temporarily, of Southern California.

We simply cannot let the northern San Joaquin Valley become a new Owens Valley, the once-water rich area on the eastern slope of the Sierra Nevada that was decimated by the water needs and political maneuvering of the vote-rich south state.