SACRAMENTO, Calif. (CN) — Aleida Suarez and Ruby Fowler left Seattle about three years ago, settling in Isleton, a city along the Sacramento delta in Sacramento County.
It was a beautiful place to relocate, the partners said in a February interview at their coffee shop. They set up Isleton Coffee Company on the city’s Main Street, a cozy business where they also allow local artists to make and display their pieces.
The watershed of California’s Sacramento delta — officially known as the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta — is the largest freshwater estuary on the West Coast and one of the Golden State’s most prized natural zones. A National Heritage Area, it offers a variety of wetland habitats and also serves as “California’s cornucopia” and “one of the most fertile agricultural regions in the world,” according to the National Park Service.
Formed at the crossroads of the Sacramento and San Joaquin Rivers, the delta flows west into the Pacific Ocean at San Francisco Bay. As it moves downstream, it sustains more than 23 million Californians, hundreds of species of wildlife and hundreds of thousands of acres of farmland.
Still, for those who live and work along the 57,000 acres of waterways, controversy over how to manage the delta’s levees, land and ecosystems has long been a part of this area’s legacy.
That’s particularly true now, amid big proposed changes to the area’s land and water use.
State officials recently approved an environmental study on the Delta Conveyance Project, a plan to add a 35-foot-wide, 45-mile tunnel to speed up collection of water and add to the state’s storage following years of drought. Officials hope the project will improve supplies that have drastically dwindled due to climate change, but some fear it could draw water from local farms and further deplete the area’s wetland habitats.
Delta residents are also nervously watching as momentum builds behind the “California Forever” project — a plan to build a brand-new “utopian” city for around 400,000 residents between San Francisco and Sacramento.
To bypass 1984 protections to keep agricultural land from being turned into urban space, that plan needs approval this year from Solano County voters. The project developers have been holding a series of town halls to prepare for that vote, which has been the center of contentious pushback from many Californians.
“I think the community is more concerned about the tunnels,” Suarez said, referring to the coming Delta Conveyance Project. But California Forever is also rattling nerves here: Big Silicon Valley money is behind the project, and it’s poised to use up even more of the delta’s precious water supply.
“Ecologically, we’re concerned about our water,” Suarez said. “As [the] climate changes, the water is getting saltier,” as lower freshwater levels led to higher relative levels of salt and other contaminants.
Still, for Suarez, Fowler and many other residents, the biggest challenges are more immediate — including California’s many power outages due to aging, overwhelmed infrastructure in rural areas.
“The whole area’s concerned about flooding, but we’re more concerned about power outages,” Suarez added. “We have outages even when the weather is good!”
More than just an ecological treasure, the 700-square mile delta is also a critical resource. State and federal pumps move water from Northern California reservoirs south, helping supply more than two-thirds of Californians with drinking water. Much of that water travels through the delta.
On its way to population centers on the coast, the delta also helps irrigate millions of acres of agriculture which produce about 45% of U.S. fruits and vegetables. Its 1,100 miles of levees, many dating back to the 1800s, protect more than 600,000 residents as well as agricultural lands and infrastructure.