Environmental Problems
Environmental problems in the heart of the state’s water system are reducing water deliveries for many California cities, farms and businesses. The problems will continue to restrict water supplies even when the current drought ends and more normal rain and snowfall patterns return.
Two of the state’s largest water systems – the State Water Project and federal Central Valley Project – move water through the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta to more than 25 million people in the San Francisco Bay Area, Central Valley and Southern California and to more than 2.5 million acres of farmland.
The Delta, however, is in an ecological crisis, with several key species in decline. New rules in place to protect one such species – the Delta smelt – have resulted in permanent restrictions on water project operations in the Delta to protect the fish, which is listed as threatened under the federal Endangered Species Act.
The restrictions, originally ordered by a federal judge, are reducing water deliveries by as much as 30% in average years. Other regulatory actions involving salmon and long-fin smelt are expected to restrict supplies even further in 2009.
The restrictions are just one symptom of the ecological crisis facing the Delta, an important estuary south of Sacramento and east of the San Francisco Bay Area that is a key link in the water system that serves two-thirds of the state’s residents.
Conflicts arising from the 50-year-old infrastructure used to convey water through the Delta have led to sharp declines in both ecosystem health and water supply reliability.