Why do we need a Congressional Delta Caucus? Don`t our lawmakers already have this under control?
No, they don’t; at least not in Washington. Our local county supervisors and assemblymen have worked very hard to sustain the Delta for environmental, agricultural, and economic reasons, but they have been fighting a rear-guard action against a better funded, larger enemy for decades. The fight is now beginning to take its toll with less and less Delta water for Delta uses, a thoroughly befuddled electorate, and inert representation in Washington, D.C. Currently, federal politicians like Jerry McNerney meet only when they feel like it and are not bound to make any decisions, draft any legislation, or carry any local concerns to the nation`s capitol. A Congressional Delta Caucus would change all that. Representatives to Washington of all parties with constituents in the Delta would meet on a regular basis, listen to the concerns of local experts and local elected officials, and coordinate a legislative agenda designed to make sure those concerns were addressed by the federal government. While much of the legislation coming out of Washington today is designed to somehow ensnare Main Street and local concerns, the fight of the Congressional Delta Caucus would be to empower local Delta agencies with a national megaphone.
What`s the problem with Delta water? The rivers always look full to me.
The problems are too many to address in one sit down – crumbling levees, a dumbfounding lack of storage and aquifer recharge options, receding water tables, political water grabs designed to suck the Delta dry, encroaching salinity, nonsensical regulatory laws, and yes, even environmental degradation which will lead to the collapse of multi-million dollar fishery and recreation industries.
Sometimes the rivers are full. And that fullness, instead of being stored for lean years or captured and sold to drier parts of the state, is simply let drift out to sea. When the rivers are not full – when San Luis or Don Pedro Reservoirs are scraping the bottom – the politically connected living in arid, over-populated cities or on marginal, unsustainable farmland demand, and get, the water flowing into our sustainable agricultural heartland. While the desert blooms, the valley withers. Experience and history has shown that, as these interests have done in other regions in the state, they will suck the Delta dry and move on. That is essentially what the proposed “Peripheral Canal” is all about. A tacit admission that it`s OK for the Delta to wither because we on the margin will simply build a concrete straw through your once vibrant watershed.
So how are you going to fix it?
It’s not just me but a team of federal, state, and local officials and experts all working in tandem. But here is the plan. Like any good battle plan or sports play, you need to combine offense with defense.
Defense: We need to forcefully assert the legal water rights that have been trampled and get other`s fingers out of our pie. We should delightfully share with our needy neighbors out of our bounty, once we build the storage capacity and conveyances to do so. But we should not entertain or tolerate shrill demands from those who failed to plan (or expanded out of all proportion to the logic of their situation) in the fat years. It’s as simple as the Grasshopper & the Ant fable.
Offense: We need to pry our needy neighbors off our back at the same time as we convince them it is a good idea. Right now, water interests are like a panicking drowning victim – they’re likely to take the lifeguard down with them. Legislating an end to subsidies of unsustainable agricultural practices down south, encouraging public water storage, and fostering next generation desalinization techniques are vital steps toward helping our neighbors quit using our medicine as their drug.