Delta group details irk community

SACRAMENTO - Four of the seven members of a proposed Delta Stewardship Council would be appointed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger under legislation unveiled Tuesday, advancing fears that such a council, if formed, would endorse a peripheral canal by the end of next year.

Two more members of the council would be appointed by legislative leaders; only one spot would be certain to represent Delta interests.

To peruse the legislation, visit http://www.assembly.ca.gov, click on "Committee Directory" and then "Committee on Water, Parks and Wildlife." You'll see a link to "2009 Proposed Delta/Water Legislation."

"This shortchanges the Delta community," said Barbara Barrigan-Parrilla, head of Stockton-based Restore the Delta. "We've been left out of the process. It's another area where we can't express our needs as a community in an adequate manner."

Those details emerged Tuesday as legislative leaders unveiled long-awaited language of a package of five water bills expected to take high priority in Sacramento now that a state budget has been achieved.

Delta interests have long called for the language in these water bills to be made public, and they were critical that many of the details were hammered out in private negotiations rather than in public hearings.

While none of the bills explicitly calls for a peripheral canal to be built, the proposed council would develop by January 2011 a Delta plan that would include strategies approved by the Delta Vision Task Force. That body has recommended a canal be built while still allowing some fresh water to flow through the estuary.

The new council also would endorse an effort known as the Bay Delta Conservation Plan, in which water users seek to build a canal and restore Delta habitat. There are conditions to this endorsement, including identifying how much water is needed to keep the Delta healthy, an analysis of all of the water-conveyance options and an assessment on how migratory fish would be affected.

In a statement, Assembly Speaker Karen Bass, D-Los Angeles, promised a "thorough and open process to review all the issues involved in protecting the Delta and the water it provides." That process begins with a public hearing Aug. 18 at the state Capitol.

Delta farmers could be affected by a provision in one of the bills, which would impose an annual fee on anyone who diverts water within the Central Valley watershed. These fees would pay for formation of the council's Delta plan. The council would include the hiring of an unknown number of state employees.

There are aspects of the legislation that Delta stakeholders may like. The bills mandate that if a multibillion-dollar canal is built, the water users must pay for it. And it calls for improved public access to the estuary as well as state and federal recognition of the Delta as a "place of special significance."

And there are no proposed dams, which appeals to environmental groups.

This is not be the first time Delta interests felt as though they were outside looking in.

Schwarzenegger's Delta Vision Task Force had no representatives from San Joaquin County, which accounts for the largest portion of the estuary.

"It doesn't seem to us like adequate representation," Barrigan-Parrilla said.

State officials already are studying potential locations for a canal, which supporters say would take pressure off Delta levees and prevent endangered fish from getting sucked into the export pumps near Tracy.

Critics call the canal a water grab that could turn the Delta into a stagnant swamp, destroying agriculture and forever changing recreational fishing and boating.