Stop the Governor's Big Ditch

The state legislature is currently considering legislation that serves as a road map to constructing the controversial "peripheral canal" and includes funding for new dams. California already diverts more than 6 million acre-feet of freshwater from the Delta annually and has more than 1,400 major dams blocking our rivers. The state has issued water-rights permits for more than five times the average annual water flow in all of California's rivers and streams. And an economic report released to the legislature last week reveals that the governor's proposed canal could cost a staggering $54 billion.

Does any aspect of this project make sense at a time when native fish populations have collapsed due to unsustainable water diversions and state parks are being closed by budget problems? After three decades of failing to solve the fisheries and water-quality issues in the Delta, lawmakers are now rushing to approve a patchwork package of misguided bills in the last weeks of this legislative session -- with no public input.

Though the sponsors of the legislation claim they are not authorizing a peripheral canal, the legislation would give a governor who has declared his intent to build it the majority of votes on a council that would have the authority to fund and construct it. Such a canal would facilitate the demise of Central Valley salmon and other native delta fish.

Take action to save the Delta today. Please contact your state assembly and senate representatives immediately and urge them to vote down the Delta bill package.

Please take action by September 11, 2009.

Klamath River photo by Blake Tupper Ansel, USFWS.

The bills will weaken existing environmental laws and guarantee water for west San Joaquin Valley agriculture while ignoring the toxic drainage problems from these lands that degrade Delta fisheries, ecology, and water quality. Aside from the fact that there is no "surplus" water to fill a peripheral canal even if it is built, the current legislation fails to solve the key conflict of providing reliable water supply while protecting fish populations.

A peripheral canal would move the diversion point for exported water north of the Delta, shifting impacts to the Sacramento River's vulnerable salmon, steelhead, and sturgeon populations. Operation of the canal would make the Delta more saline, eliminating critical habitat for pelagic fish species in Suisun Bay and the Sacramento River, and would increase pollutant concentrations, water temperatures, and dissolved oxygen problems in the Delta.

A new layer of politically motivated governance atop the existing ineffectual and unresponsive state water bureaucracies like the Department of Water Resources and the State Water Resources Control Board will not solve the problems in the Delta. What is needed instead is aggressive enforcement of existing water laws and reduction of unsustainable Delta water exports. The solutions to California's water mismanagement include investments in water conservation, recycling and reclamation by agricultural water users, revision of over-allocated water rights, and improved groundwater management, which will provide far more water than building harmful new dams and an expensive and controversial canal.