RIO VISTA, Calif. (CN) – An hour’s drive northeast of San Francisco lies California’s most important water source and the West Coast’s largest estuary. Stretching across 1,100 square miles and five counties, the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta and its dozens of manmade islands support a $5 billion agricultural industry and supply water to over 25 million Californians.
But the Golden State’s endless thirst and population growth has the delta on the brink of ecological disaster, experts predict. Decades of overpumping, agricultural runoff and tepid water temperatures have nearly extinguished a once-booming salmon population and polluted water quality.
Warning of rising sea levels and the need to fortify the delta against earthquakes, Gov. Jerry Brown is pushing wholescale changes to the state’s water savings bank.
As Brown, 79, nears final approval of a $16.7 billion delta water project that could begin as early as 2018 and take more than a decade to build, delta farmers, environmentalists and residents remain skeptical.
“The state is trying to sustain and create expensive new farming instead of relying on what we have here,” said Ken Scheidegger, longtime delta farmer and business owner. “The delta people have been ignored.”
Brown’s critics are pushing back on a plan that would tunnel delta water around the estuary directly to the state’s southernmost mega-growers and eventually cities like Los Angeles.
Just east of one of many movable bridges spanning the delta in Isleton is a quaint indoor/outdoor farmers market and the future site of Scheidegger’s 8,000 square-foot education center. Scheidegger, who attended the University of California, Berkeley, and has a doctorate in oceanography from Oregon State, wants to build a multimillion-dollar center and bring the delta’s extraordinary history to students and residents.
Scheidegger says the delta is perpetually misunderstood despite being the heart of the state’s water system. He pointed to an alarming 2012 Probolsky Research poll that found more than 75 percent of respondents acknowledged knowing nothing about the delta.
Now the hub of California’s state and federal water systems, miners and retailers used the delta during the Gold Rush to connect with the outside world. Steamboats began dashing from San Francisco in 1847 through the delta’s waterways to Sacramento, dropping hordes of supplies and optimistic new miners.
As the Gold Rush wound down, luckless miners and entrepreneurs transformed the delta into an agricultural hotspot. Using mostly immigrant Chinese laborers, developers reclaimed delta marshes by building levees and dredging channels. The delta’s fertile soil funded the transformation and quickly responded with crops like tomatoes, rice, peaches, olives and grapes. Today there are over 1,000 miles of levees protecting delta islands and communities, some of which are below sea level.
By the end of World War I, nearly all the delta marshes had been reclaimed under the federal Swamp Land Act. While delta farmers flourished, water-poor Central Valley farmers ran out of supplies.