Suit seeks to block

Delta residents say planned peripheral canal would make the water salty

Wes Sander
Capital Press

April 16, 2009

Two Delta water agencies filed suit this week to stop the Bay Delta Conservation Plan from moving forward.

John Herrick, attorney for the South Delta Water Agency, says the plan's steering committee treated the public process with "reckless abandon" in pushing its plans for a peripheral canal around the Delta.

Various studies and plans have recommended some version of a peripheral canal. Voters rejected a similar proposal in the 1980s.

"They've already decided to do the peripheral canal, but they don't want to tell people that," Herrick said.

The Bay Delta Conservation Plan is a document required by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service for a permit to kill protected species. The plan must adequately ensure the long-term health of protected Delta species.

The lawsuit names as defendants several state and federal agencies along with each member of the BDCP Steering Committee, among them the California Farm Bureau Federation and a list of water agencies and environmental groups.

"In spite of its misleading title as a conservation plan, this ... approach is contrary to law and attempts to circumvent a host of federal and state statutory schemes and supporting court decisions, including those specifically intended to protect the Delta and its species," the lawsuit states.

Damage to those species results from the force of the southern pumps, which take Delta water for export to the San Joaquin Valley and Southern California. The challenge lies in balancing that goal with stable water deliveries.

A peripheral canal would allow water slated for pumping south - to San Joaquin Valley farmers and southern cities - to bypass the Delta altogether. Delta locals have cried foul, saying the plan would turn their water salty.

"If their plan goes forward, they will certainly, irrefutably, salt up the south part of the Delta," Herrick said. "This is a life-and-death struggle for a lot of people. They're trying to change (the rules) to get water to where there isn't any. They have to overcome Delta interests in order to do that."

Through the month of March, agency officials traveled to public meetings up and down the state, collecting input on alternative versions of its plan for saving the Delta's collapsing native fish habitat while maintaining water exports in future dry years.

The plan's basic problem is that those goals are not compatible, Herrick says.

"The system only produces so much water per year," he said. "If you want to make a stable supply without having any of that water in storage or you haven't developed it, species collapse."

Staff writer Wes Sander is based in Sacramento. E-mail: wsander@capitalpress.com.