Water Buffaloes in the Delta

(Originally posted on waterefficiency.net)

By Elizabeth Cutright
Editor
Water Efficiency

It’s a dilemma that faces many water purveyors: how to balance urban and agricultural water needs, while protecting and maintaining environmentally delicate water sources. One need only look to northern California’s Sacramento Delta for a real-world example of just how difficult it is to manage competing demands while protecting a finite resource.
In California, there has long been tension between the relatively water-rich north and the arid south. Surrounded by desert and charged with supplying water to dense urban areas, southern California depends on remote water sources to meet demand. In fact, almost 20 million state residents get at least some of their water from the Sacramento Delta—a small patch of land in the north where the ocean and rivers meet. But the Delta provides more than just drinking water; its resources support a large chunk of California’s agribusiness, and it just happens be the home of the endangered Delta Smelt. Unfortunately, the Delta is under siege—not just from urban and rural consumers, but also from rising sea levels and never-ending drought.
And while climate change, species protection, and ears that every predicted earthquake catastrophe known as “the big one” hold some sway, it’s clear that California’s big water players, known as “water buffalos,” will not sit idly by as decisions are made about the water they depend on for survival. These water buffalos—comprised of agribusiness as well as large urban centers and commercial interests—are focused on keeping the water flowing, and their needs sometimes trump future planning.
It’s a precarious situation, and the Delta’s survival depends upon how the parties involved will manage competing demands and interests. Recently, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s administration came up with the Deltavision Blue Ribbon Task Force in an attempt to develop a workable plan to protect the Delta and maintain the state’s water supply. The current Task Force suggestions include using recycled water for irrigation and industry, the construction of additional desalination plants, and new infrastructure in the form of reservoirs and peripheral canals. The Task Force also calls for stricter oversight of water rights permits to insure that the agricultural industry is not using more than its allocated water share.
What do you think? Can the situation in California be used as a test case for other communities similarly stuck between urban, rural, and environmental interests? And can an entity like the Delatavision Task Force really make a difference?