Dan wrote;

"The report tries to builds the case that the Delta should be abandoned because sea level rise will make it unsustainable. Climate change is a reality and must be prepared for, but that means for coastal California as well as the Delta. Decisions made to protect the coasts will play a part in determining what needs to happen in the Delta. We should be looking at studies on how to stop salt water intrusion into the Delta. We should be planning for set back levees and gate systems, as is being done in other regions throughout the world. Climate change should not become a reason to abandon the people of the Delta any more than it should be used as a reason to abandon people living in coastal communities."

The 'scientist' authors of the Delta report are sending mixed messages; on the one hand they acknowledge that climate change is real and would increase a rise in sea level, yet avoid the next obvious conclusion that any peripheral canal that attempts to skirt the exterior of the delta would additionally increase the risk of salt water intrusion into the delta further inland even further beyond the capacity of climate change alone! Just one storm surge into the interior and the water can rush into the peripheral canal, surround and further inundate the delta with saline ocean water. This is like giving the ocean an expressway into the heart of the delta! One comparison to a similar ecosystem is the lower Mississippi delta and the bayous surrounding New Orleans, how the countless petroleum transport canals have allowed salt water intrusion that resulted in weakening protection from storm surge by killing freshwater cypress swamps..

some background on canals and saltwater intrusion;

"The impact of oil and gas extraction on the natural systems of the Louisiana coast is hard to exaggerate.75 The initial space of the access canals is relatively minor. It’s what happens next that matters. The canals erode, exacerbated by wave wash from passing boats. In 10 years the widths have doubled; then they double again. While intact, the spoil banks cut off the natural drainage for hundreds of yards around, impounding half of the marsh and drowning the other half. Up the canal comes saltwater from the Gulf. The grasses go belly up, the root masses die, the soils are released, the whole thing falls apart. Recent studies by the United States Geological Survey discover a related phenomenon.76 The industry has excavated billions of gallons of brines, salts and minerals from under the wetlands, much of it close to the surface, following which—surprise!—they caved in. Marsh erosion or subsurface extraction: pick your weapon, they both kill.

The sum is daunting. Apart from the major navigation systems across the coastal zone, we have another 8000 miles of canals and pipelines and they are all eroding.77 They are all speeding salt water into freshwater systems, which are already on life-support and imploding. It’s hard to find your fishing spots these days out of Hopedale, Delacroix and Yclosky. After Katrina, it’s even hard to find the towns. Every scientific study available places the cumulative impacts of oil and gas activities ahead of even the Mississippi levees as a leading cause of land loss in Louisiana, with responsibility above 50% overall,78 and up to 90% in heavily exploited fields.79"

article cont's @;
http://www.saveourwetlands.org/cansaveno.html

Add the the accessibility of ocean water intrusion via peripheral canal the factor of freshwater export, that just magnifies the salinity even more! Of course if there are already low levels of freshwater coming down the Sacramento being made even lower as large amounts of freshwater are funneled south by the canal to the agribusinesses of the San Joaquin Valley. Having a corporation as irresponsible as Bechtel design and carry out the construction of this peripheral canal is like asking Mother Nature to slap the delta with a severe storm surge and having some additional crisises on the delta, we can always make an already bad situation worse by welcoming Bechtel into the delta community to build a peripheral canal..

For the delta islands (and their human residents) that wish to remain above sea level over the next few decades, setback levees and restoration of tule wetlands on the edges of the islands would be a logical solution to subsiding islands and rising sea levels. There needs to be some compromise between percieved human needs (indefinite farming on subsiding delta islands) and the processes of ecosystems dependent on seasonal flooding's deposition of sediments. This is the middle ground between complete abandonment of the delta islands to flooding and the ostrich "head in the sand" syndrome that modern civilization has to looking at ecosystem changes. The very existence of these delta islands is the result of seasonal flooding over hundreds of years prior to settlement, and the resulting levees that prevent ANY flooding results in loss of sediment building peat and eventual subsiding of the islands to their current below sea level position..

Again, we find similar situations in New Orleans;

"Here is what we also know. New Orleans is an island. I have a map in my office captioned “New Orleans and Vicinity” prepared from Landsat satellite data taken in 1992 (we can wind the clock back on land loss by 13 years) from an altitude of 400 miles.9 It shows the city in white, compact, not that big, bleached out by roads and buildings. On two sides are the river and the lake. To the north and south are ribbons of dry land along the Mississippi. Everything else is green and blue wetland and open water. It is a beautiful photo. It is not exactly an advertisement, however, for investment in real estate.

We know a couple of things more, going in. For openers, we are short on land building materials. We live on a sinking delta, and the silts and plant mass that created it and offset its natural rate of subsidence are down to a fraction of their volumes a century ago.10 We have a lot less to work with than Mother Nature did. Even within the city, we are sinking. Post-Katrina surveys are finding many buildings about half a foot lower than they were thought to be, and down by two feet in the East.11 Which is not good."

found @;
http://www.saveourwetlands.org/cansaveno.html

Similar patterns with subsidence found in the Sacramento delta;

"
“All the stars have aligned” to make people finally recognize the seriousness of the situation, says John Cain, the director of restoration programs for the Natural Heritage Institute, a San Francisco-based nonprofit group. First, the 2004 levee failure of one delta island flooded 12,000 acres of farmland and cost the state $90 million to repair. Then, in 2005, Hurricane Katrina devastated the city of New Orleans, in part because of the catastrophic failure of Louisiana’s levees. And a number of recent studies have highlighted the increasing fragility of the delta ecosystem, particularly at a time when rapid residential and commercial development is squeezing the system to what many scientists fear is the breaking point.

“It’s not hard to imagine that by 2030, there will be a completely urbanized ring around the delta,” says Cain, leaving water managers with less flexibility to flood uninhabited land in order to relieve pressure on the levees. Compounding the problem, many of the delta’s levee-protected tracts are actually depressions that lie as far as 20 feet below sea level. That’s because the region’s peat soil is highly unstable, the product of eons of native tule grass sprouting, growing, dying and being reincorporated. When exposed to the air, the soil decomposes, emitting carbon dioxide and causing the islands to subside even further. According to Huey Johnson, the former head of the state’s Resources Agency and the founder of the nonprofit Trust for Public Land, “you can sow a lot of carrots in that fertile delta soil and act like you’ve got paradise, but what you’ve really got is a ticking time bomb.” And global warming, he says, could be just the thing to ignite that bomb."

article found @;
http://www.nwf.org/nationalwildlife/article.cfm?issueID=116&articleID=1497

We need to remind ourselves that in both cases of levee building and development along river deltas, modern European-americans neglected to understand the lifestyles of indigenous delta residents were adapted to the seasonal flooding cycles with sediment deposition and that these floods were not seen as something that needed to be prevented. We spend a great deal of time trying to educate the indigenous peoples of the Americas to adapt into Euro-american culture and lifestyle, yet never bothered to teach the Euro-americans about the benefits of indigenous lifestyles adapted to natural ecosystems. There were ways that indigenous people 'improved' upon certain plant ecosystems with controlled burns and selective harvests, though nothing as extreme as current water management practices to benefit agribusiness in modern times..

The book "Tending the Wild" is a great resource for future land (& water) management scientists;

"M. Kat Anderson presents a wealth of information on native land management practices gleaned in part from interviews and correspondence with Native Americans who recall what their grandparents told them about how and when areas were burned, which plants were eaten and which were used for basketry, and how plants were tended. The complex picture that emerges from this and other historical source material dispels the hunter-gatherer stereotype long perpetuated in anthropological and historical literature. We come to see California's indigenous people as active agents of environmental change and stewardship. Tending the Wild persuasively argues that this traditional ecological knowledge is essential if we are to successfully meet the challenge of living sustainably."

book found @;
http://www.ucpress.edu/books/pages/10013.php

The farmlands along the delta islands would benefit from sediment deposition if the land were allowed to receive floodwaters from the river (NOT the ocean!) every other year. That would be one year of fallow land ready for flooding with some hedgerows and tule reed swamps on the fringes to catch and trap the sediments carried by floodwaters. Next year there will be fertile soil from river sediments deposited on the islands, and over the decades the sediment deposition would return the islands to their previous location above sea level. Farmers and delta island residents could be compensated for their relocation during times of flooding, though in the long term the islands would increase their potential for fertility. Tule reeds themselves are a natural resource, if indigenous peoples could make lightweight floating houseboats from tule reeds, who is to say that cannot happen in our future if tule swamps are restored??

Benefits of seasonal flooding & wetlands;

"Wetlands tend to slow down the force of water, encouraging the deposition of sediments carried in the water. This is beneficial further downstream where deposition of sediments may block waterways. Nutrients are often associated with sediments and can be deposited at the same time. These nutrients, mainly nitrogen and phosphorous from agricultural sources but also from human wastes and industrial discharges, may accumulate in the sub-soil, be transformed by chemical and biological processes or be taken up by wetland vegetation which can then be harvested and effectively removed from the system.

This capacity for nutrient retention makes many wetland ecosystems among the most productive recorded, rivalling intensive agricultural systems. Annual primary production of Papyrus in some African wetlands is estimated at 100 tonnes per hectare, Typha (bullrush) at 30-70 tonnes per hectare. These figures are similar to or even exceed the commercial production of crops such as maize (63 tonnes per hectare) and sugar cane (60 tonnes per hectare) and the latter require inputs such as fertilizers and pesticides as well as irrigation. Even in temperate zones, where the growing season is relatively short, wetlands can rival agricultural production: compare the 14 tonnes per hectare annual production of a freshwater reed marsh in Denmark with the 10 tonnes per hectare of grass in European pastures.

Seasonal flooding is a natural phenomenon in most of the world’s rivers. Inland floodplains and coastal deltas are the natural "overflow" areas that slow the velocity of the floodwaters, allowing the nutrients and sediments to settle. These rich floodplains and deltas have sustained populations for thousands of years but continue to do so only in a limited number of cases: for the most part, inland floodplains have been "reclaimed" for other uses (such as agriculture, housing, industry) and engineered flood control structures and dams have channelled the water, destroying the natural movement of sediments and nutrients. The Rhine river in Europe is a typical example: engineered solutions to flood and transport problems over the past 150 years have caused the loss of 90% of the original floodplain in its upper reaches, and the river is now flowing twice as fast as before."

article found @;
http://www.ramsar.org/info/values_sediment_e.htm

Lastly the burden of water conservation needs to be shouldered by the agribusiness corporations who demand the greatest share of river water for their inefficient irrigation of monoculture crops. If agribusiness is unable or unwilling to reduce their irrigation demands, than the agribusiness models need to be discontinued and replaced by better options. The evidence shows that smaller scale farms can provide the same or greater yield of nutritionally diverse food crops while using far less water, pesticides, etc.. than their industrial agriplantation neighbors. One simple and cost effective way of reducing evaporation from soil is by covering ground with mulch, though it would be a million years before agribusiness corporations could be persuaded to use mulch instead of taking excess water from already low flowing rivers..

We need a major reform of how farmland is used and distributed, am personally in favor of reclaiming farmland from the industrial agribusiness corporations and converting land to smaller scale permaculture biodynamic farms in combination with urban greenspace islands like southcentral campesino farm in L.A. as an example. This will place the important task of food production into the hands of the local communities and out of the control of agribusiness corporation only concerned with short term profit regardless of the cost to ecosystems..

Some info on water uses on biodynamic farms;

"Also of interest is the role of mulch, particularly for apples and grapes, although all crops would benefit. During the 1980s the use of mulch in Protea flower growing was rejected because it was considered to harbour undesirable organisms. Herbicides, pesticides and fungicides were considered inappropriate. HortResearch has now proposed contrary results as mulch increases soil moisture retention and adds to the development of the soil profile, soil temperature fluctuates less and the incidence of phytopthora fungi is reduced because of improved surface rooting. Calcium, potassium and magnesium are increased in the soil, and calcium and potassium in the leaves. Plant vigour and root density increases, while weeds become less."

additional info @;
http://www.biodynamic.org.nz/resrepch8.html

Interview with Henry Brockman, winner of Patrick Madden Award for Sustainable Agriculture;

"Q. Any final comments?

A. Small and sustainable go together and small-scale farms are more often organic. Now organic is sold in every grocery store. But with much of the organic food in the supermarkets, we are headed back to the factory, large-scale, streamlined model of conventional food production. But I think that if you are making a living, why try to sell more just to make the same amount of money? We need a lot of small-scale sustainable farms, or just small farms because that is what I think is sustainable. To me, small scale sustainable farmers, selling to local markets, is true sustainable agriculture. Every year, my neighbor at the farmers market asks me why I do not expand and go to more farmers markets. He goes to one every day of the week…he cannot understand what is wrong with me—why I am not growing and expanding my markets like he is. I caution people not to do more if you do not have to. If you’re making a living, why stress out and do more. Growers get caught up in this idea of having to get bigger. I have no desire to get any bigger."

interview found @;
http://attra.ncat.org/interviews/brockman.html

Urban greenspace farming needs help;

"On July 2, Angelenos overcame the City-planned divides between rich and poor, cultural differences, and even broke through language barriers in the fight to restore the South Central Farm.? When the developer proposed a diesel-spewing warehouse distribution center for the site, Farmers and Farm supporters threw a wrench in the cogs of City Hall and won a round in the fight to force Horowitz to do an Environmental Impact Report: they forced a twenty-one day delay for more public comments, and gained a glimmer of hope to restore the Farm.? The fight between the people and developers' grip on City Hall could be decided by this Wednesday, July 23, 2008, the new deadline for public comments and the second hearing, a week or two later on the tenth floor of City Hall, in front of a small advisory board.

The extension opens the door to reclaim the Farm, but Jan Perry, infamous for running the homeless off her streets, for gentrifying the downtown section of her district while "developing" low-wage strip malls, warehouses, and dead-end jobs for her South Central constituents, is buttressing City Hall's resistance to change.? Meanwhile, Farm supporters are back on neighborhood streets.? They're making more phone calls.? They're carrying petitions to area gatherings and across the country.?? They're asking Angelenos to send an online petition to the Planning Department, to demand the Recreation and Parks Commission weigh in and protect the adjacent proposed soccer field, to read the MND and the rest of the documents at the South Central Farm website, to offer to help.? They're asking the people of Los Angeles to unite once more, to reach out from our urban isolation in defiance of all that conspires to divide us, in order to restore the South Central Farm, the world's largest urban farm, an oasis in the middle of? Los Angeles's industrial wasteland."

visit & sign petition @;
http://www.southcentralfarmers.com/

also;
http://www.southcentralfarmers.org/