Calif. water plan stirs controversy

By JULIANA BARBASSA
Associated Press

FRESNO, Calif. -- A plan to increase fresh-water pumping from the San Joaquin-Sacramento river delta is pitting Central Valley farmers who want the water for their crops against environmentalists and delta farmers who fear the move will undermine years of fishery and water quality restoration efforts.

The proposal would increase the amount of water pumped out of the delta, a fragile ecosystem that already supplies water for 22 million Californians as far south as Los Angeles and irrigates millions of acres of Central Valley farmland.

The increased flow would help stabilize the amount of water delivered to farmers in the western half of the Central Valley, giving them the ability to better plan for long-term or higher-value crops, farmers in the region said.

Those farmers, who have had their water flows limited during the past decade as water was diverted to wildlife refuges, say it is time they get the water they were promised.

But environmentalists say the move could reverse years -- and millions of dollars worth -- of ecosystem restoration work. Reducing fresh-water flows to the delta could affect its water quality by increasing salinity and temperature, possibly threatening the salmon that have been slowly returning to the region's rivers, advocates say.

Opponents to the plan also say it undermines a decade of cooperation under CalFed, a state-federal water management program designed to balance the water supply demands of urban and rural users with environmental considerations.

Since 1992, CalFed has overseen the spending of about $500 million in state and federal funds to reverse some of the damage that 150 years of mining and water diversion did to the delta.

The effort has helped restore the delicate balance between fresh water from the mountain rivers and salt water from the San Francisco Bay that is essential to salmon and other species of marine and plant life.

The restoration effort has brought back a naturally reproducing salmon population that had almost disappeared.

In the early 1990s, only a few hundred winter-run chinook salmon were making their way through the Golden Gate Bridge, through the delta and up Sierra Nevada rivers such as the Tuolumne, Merced and Sacramento.

Now, thousands of fish fight the currents to make their way up the rivers every winter.