The Sacramento San Joaquin Delta Crisis
Decline of the Delta
The Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta is located at the confluence of the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers, and just east of where the rivers enter Suisun Bay. The Delta is part of the Bay-Delta estuary and the larger Bay-Delta ecosystem which extends from Sierra Rivers to the Gulf of the Farallones. Estuaries are areas where fresh water from rivers and streams mixes with saltwater tidal flows, creating nutrient rich brackish waters.
Estuaries provide spawning grounds for some fish species, and rearing areas and migratory pathways for others, including salmon. The most productive fishing grounds along the Pacific Coast are typically located offshore of estuaries. Juvenile salmonids rear in estuarine wetland habitat during their downward migrations to the sea. In such habitat they forage for food, find shelter from predators, grow, and build strength as they transition from freshwater to life in the sea.
Our Bay-Delta is the largest estuarine ecosystem along the entire west coast of North and South America. It is considered by many to be California's most important ecosystem. The Delta serves as the hub of California's water supply, making it a vital resource for California's infrastructure and economy. It has become ground-zero in the fight over water allocation in California. The outcome will determine whether the Bay-Delta's fish and wildlife resources, and the economy they support, will be restored or destroyed.
Before major development for land and water use, the historic Bay-Delta landscape consisted of vast areas of brackish and fresh water marshes, intertidal wetlands, and their associated waterways and sloughs. They created a rich and complex ecosystem which supported a great diversity of fish and wildlife. Resident fish species included Sacramento splittail, delta smelt, longfin smelt, thicktail chub, and others. Anadromous fish included Chinook and Coho salmon, steelhead, and green and white sturgeon.
The Bay-Delta is in a state of ecological crisis. Some native fish species that were historically abundant are threatened, endangered, or extinct. Coho salmon and thicktail chub are no longer found in the Bay-Delta. Populations of Chinook salmon, steelhead, green and white sturgeon, Delta smelt, longfin smelt, Sacramento splittail, and other fish have dramatically declined. Concentrations of phytoplankton and zooplankton have dropped sharply, bringing the food chain to the brink of collapse. The migratory pathways have become a deadly gauntlet for salmon and steelhead. Large areas have become dominated by destructive invasive species.
Factors in the Decline
Many factors have contributed to the Delta’s decline. A summary follows. The map at this link shows an overview of the modern Delta. http://www.ppic.org/content/pubs/report/R_207JLMap1_1.pdf
So much fresh water is diverted upstream and in the Delta that what remains is not sufficient to support the needs of fish and wildlife. Average annual freshwater outflows from the Delta to the Bay are only about half of natural unimpaired flows. About 31% of unimpaired flows are diverted upstream before they reach the Delta. Inflows to the Delta from the San Joaquin River are reduced by up to 80% in dry years. The state and federal water projects operate massive pumping facilities in the south Delta. They export about 17% of total freshwater flows. In-Delta diversions take about 4%. Exact percentages vary from year to year depending on rainfall. Sierra winter runoff and spring snowmelt historically provided high winter and spring cold water flows through the Delta. They inundated floodplains, helped transport migrating juvenile salmon through the Delta to the sea, and provided many other benefits to native fish and wildlife. Water management practices have dramatically reduced the ecologically critical winter and spring flows. Winter-spring runoff now gets captured and stored behind dams to be exported in the summer for agricultural irrigation and other uses.
Export pumping distorts natural flow patterns and kills enormous numbers of fish. The Delta's main source of fresh water is the Sacramento River. It contributes about 75-80% of the Delta's fresh water in most years. This means most fresh water enters on the north side of the Delta. The state and federal export pumps are located in the south Delta. The need to move large volumes of Sacramento River water to the pumps creates highly altered flow patterns. The pumps redirect net Delta flows in a north-south direction instead of the natural downstream direction from east to west. They pull Sacramento River water through the Delta Cross-Channel and Georgiana Slough, through the central Delta and south toward the pumps. Export pumping causes net reverse flows in the south Delta; water flows upstream to the pumps rather than downstream to the sea. Juvenile salmon get pulled off their migration routes down the Sacramento, San Joaquin and Mokelumne Rivers. Millions of salmon and other fish get pulled into conveyance channels where they are eaten by predators or killed at the pumps. Incomplete counting procedures underestimate the numbers of fish killed, directly and indirectly, by pumping operations. The true numbers are almost certainly in the tens of millions of fish annually. Export pumping also removes phytoplankton, zooplankton, nutrients and organic material which would otherwise support the base of the Delta food chain.
The Bay-Delta is listed under the Federal Clean Water Act as impaired for a variety of toxic contaminants. The water is contaminated with pesticides, selenium, ammonia, mercury, and other pollutants from agricultural, industrial, and urban sources. Inflows to the Delta from the San Joaquin River are often of especially poor quality due to high temperatures, salts, pesticides, and other contaminants in agricultural runoff that enters the river. Reduced freshwater flows increase the risks to fish and wildlife by concentrating these pollutants and causing them to flush out of the Delta more slowly.
Historic Delta waterways created a complex network of rivers, sloughs and dead-end channels connecting to marshes and seasonal floodplains. Inundated marshes and floodplains create high quality habitat for some species. They can also enhance the food chain by supplying sediments, organic materials, nutrients, and plankton to adjacent river channels and downstream areas. This "ecosystem fertilization" is another example of how freshwater flows can promote fish and wildlife abundance in estuaries. The historic channel network connected vast areas of high quality habitat that included natural flows, abundant food and protective cover.
About 95% of historic wetlands have been removed from the ecosystem. Most of these areas were converted to farmland. Land conversion and water conveyance drove efforts to redesign the Delta's waterways. They were deepened, widened, straightened, armored, confined between levees, and disconnected from floodplains and marshes. Elements which provided habitat structure and protective cover including bank vegetation and fallen trees were removed. Channels were built to connect what were historically disconnected waterways that provided a hetrogeneous aquatic environment. These actions reduced habitat quantity and quality, and food chain productivity. They altered natural flow routes and homogenized the aquatic ennvironment. They eliminated most of the historic channel network and turned what remained into a system of simplified, interconnected conveyance canals designed to maximize movement of fresh water to the pumps.
Compare these maps of historic habitat and habitat today. Most wetlands and channel network are gone. Historic: http://bay.org/assets/g10.pdf Today: http://bay.org/assets/g11.pdf
Compare today's levee confined channels to historic habitat: http://www.ppic.org/content/pubs/report/R_207JLMap2_2.pdf
Although channel simplification and wetland habitat loss are long term factors in the Delta's decline, they did not cause the recent collapse of salmon and other native fish. Most wetland loss occurred decades ago, long before the recent collapse. However, low flows and increased export pumping amplify the problems by further reducing habitat quantity and quality, further degrading food chain productivity, causing even greater distortion of natural flow patterns, and pulling millions of fish into the conveyance channels where many don't survive.
The Delta's unnatural flow patterns also support invasive predator and competitor species. The Bay-Delta has been labeled "the most invaded estuary on earth". Invasive alien plants like Brazilian waterweed in the central and southern Delta choke waterways, filter sediments and nutrients from the water, reduce planktonic growth, and provide ambush habitat for predatory alien fish like largemouth bass. Alien fish in the central and southern Delta, most of which evolved in warm slow moving water bodies in the southeastern United States, prey upon and drive out juvenile salmon and other native fish. Experts believe the numbers of fish eaten by predators in channels leading to the pumps are even greater than those killed directly at the pumps.
Native Delta fish species evolved under highly variable flow and water quality conditions. Water management practices and the conversion of historic waterways into conveyance canals have reduced natural variability and created highly altered conditions. Natural seasonal variations and seaward gradients in temperature, turbidity, salinity and flow have been altered and reduced. Water conditions are more warm, clear, uniform and stable than they were historically. These conditions favor a narrower group of alien aquatic species more commonly associated with temperate freshwater lakes.
Salinity standards require enough freshwater outflows through the Delta to the Bay to keep salt water out of the Delta interior and away from the pumps. The standards allow water management agencies to eliminate high winter-spring flows during wet years and withold the water for summer exports and other uses instead. Freshwater outflows are artificially stabilized, or "flat-lined", as releases from upstream dams are managed to provide just enough outflows to meet the standards. High winter-spring cold water flows through the Delta to the Bay have been dramatically reduced and replaced by warmer, clearer summer flows from the Sacramento River to the pumps.
The interconnected conveyance channels in combination with export pumping and tidal forces maximize water movement across large areas. This causes water from different areas to mix rapidly, reducing variability and homogenizing water quality. The channels don't provide much food or protective cover for native fish. Export pumping pulls millions of native fish into the channels where they become food for invasive predators. Increased water clarity makes it easier for predators to see and catch their prey. Warm water temperatures cause juvenile salmon to become stressed and less able to escape from predators.
These conditions provide competitive advantages to predatory warm-water fish adapted to lake environments over natives adapted to the more variable historic Delta environment. They have also helped enable invasive Asian clams to reach extremely high densities in some areas of the Delta. These voracious filter feeders disrupt the food chain by consuming vast quantities of phytoplankton in areas where they dominate. Restoring more natural flow and habitat conditions in the central and southern Delta could help control the spread of freshwater invasives and help tip the balance back in favor of salmon and other desirable fish.
Overbite clams, also from Asia, have invaded large areas in the western Delta and Suisun Bay. Like freshwater Asian clams, overbite clams disrupt the food chain and degrade habitat suitability for native fish by consuming vast quantities of phytoplankton. Historic high winter-spring flows made the western Delta and Suisun Bay seasonally fresh. Today's artificially stabilized conditions keep these areas brackish most of the time. These conditions in the western Delta favor overbite clams which do well in brackish water but not freshwater. Higher and more variable freshwater flows could help control the spread of overbite clams and other destructive species.
Ideally, all of the above stressors should be reduced or eliminated. It's not possible to recover all historic habitat or eliminate all invasive species. But, damage caused by increased export pumping and low freshwater flows can be greatly reduced by changing water management practices. There is strong scientific evidence that low flows and altered flow patterns are a major contributor to the ongoing collapse of salmon and other fish and that flows must be restored if we are to turn the collapse around. Restored flows alone can’t fix all of the Delta’s problems. Habitat restoration, pollution reduction, and other improvements are needed. However, these improvements can't be expected to recover the Delta without adequate freshwater flows. Flows are the foundation for recovery.
Delta Exports and Flow Recommendations
Water diversions for in-Delta uses have remained fairly steady at slightly over 1 million acre-feet (MAF) per year. However, exports by state and federal water projects have increased dramatically for several decades. Five year averages increased from less than 3MAF in 1968-72 to more than 6MAF in 2003-2007. Declines of salmon and other fish accelerated sharply during these years. This is no coincidence. Scientists and fishery advocates have long known that the Delta’s ecosystem and fish populations have suffered because too much fresh water is diverted. A major barrier to progress has been that there was no credible answer to the question; how much freshwater flow do the Bay-Delta's fish need? San Joaquin Valley irrigators have demanded more and more water even as fish populations crashed and the salmon industry shut down. Meanwhile, flow needs for the Delta were left undefined and indeed suppressed. Finally, this has changed.
In August of 2010, the State Water Board released a report identifying flows needed to protect public trust resources and water quality in the Delta. The Water Board found that much more water should flow through the Delta than does today. The report was mandated by the state legislature as part of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta Reform Act of 2009. These flows are intended to restore fish populations and not simply to prevent extinctions. The scope of the report was to quantify flow needs for the Delta but not to balance the Delta's needs against other needs for water. The report is not legally binding but is intended to inform the Bay Delta Conservation Plan (BDCP) process, the Delta Stewardship Council's Delta management plan, and future State Board rulings that could improve freshwater flows through the Delta.
The report says, “Restoring environmental variability in the Delta is fundamentally inconsistent with continuing to move large volumes of water through the Delta for export”, and that current Delta water policies have been “disastrous for desirable fish”. The report recommends that, ideally, about 75 percent of all fresh water runnoff in the Delta's watershed should flow through the Delta and out to the Bay. Today, about 50 percent flows through the Delta on average with lower percentages in some years. In rough terms, upriver and in-Delta water use would need to be cut by half to meet the 75 percent target. Four specific recommendations follow.
- 75% of natural runoff in the Sacramento River should flow into the Delta in the winter and spring versus about 50% on average today.
- 60% of natural runoff in the San Joaquin River should flow into the Delta in the winter and spring versus about 40% in wet years and 20% in dry years today.
- 75% of natural flows into the Delta should flow through the Delta and out to the bay in the winter and spring versus about 50% in on average today.
- Sufficient outflows should flow through the Delta during the fall to maintain positive flows or low reverse flows in south Delta channels in most years. Compare this to recent reverse flows up to -8,000 cubic feet per second.
These flows can't be achieved by changing Delta pumping operations alone. In-Delta and upriver operations would both need to change. It will be critical to balance Delta flow needs against upriver needs. These flows would require higher releases from upstream dams in the winter and spring. Releases must be managed to conserve the supply of cold water which salmon and steelhead need for adult holding, spawning, egg incubation and juvenile rearing in the upper river reaches. These potentially conflicting needs must be reconciled before Delta flow standards can be finalized. The report can be downloaded at this link: http://www.waterboards.ca.gov/waterrights/water_issues/programs/bay_delta/deltaflow/docs/final_rpt080310.pdf
The Bay Delta Conservation Plan
The Bay Delta Conservation Plan (BDCP) has been described by government officials and water contractors as a collaborative effort to solve California’s water problems. Others have described it as a water grab disguised as a conservation plan. The stated objective as defined by the California Legislature is to achieve two co-equal goals: providing a more reliable water supply for the State of California, and restoring the Delta ecosystem.
In the December 2010 draft plan, BDCP proposed that a massive new water conveyance system should be built costing an estimated $12 billion. It would include 5 intakes along the Sacramento River capable of diverting 3,000 cfs each, 6 pumping stations, and two underground 33-foot diameter pipes. This facility would be built near Hood, CA which is removed from major earthquake faults and is upstream of where salt water is expected to reach as global sea levels rise. The new system would divert water from the Sacramento River and route it to existing pumps in the south Delta. The south Delta pumps would remain fully operational. This dual conveyance configuration could divert water from both the upriver and south Delta locations. BDCP estimated that average annual exports would increase by about 26% with the new conveyance compared to the current system alone.
The process used to develop this proposal has been severely flawed. BDCP failed to consider the role which freshwater flows play in the health of the ecosystem. The State Water Board’s flow report makes it clear that the Delta ecosystem can’t be restored with current water exports let alone even higher exports. The Delta Reform Act made it state policy to reduce reliance on the Delta in meeting California’s future water supply needs. BDCP’s plan to export even more water is in direct conflict with this policy.
The U.S. Secretaries of Interior and Commerce asked the National Research Council to review the 2010 draft plan and report on their findings. NRC found that the plan lacks coherence and contains critical scientific gaps. They found that, while BDCP claims its purpose is to meet the co-equal goals, it focuses on water conveyance at the expense of the ecosystem. It had “put the cart before the horse” by jumping to a preferred project without evaluating alternatives to learn which could best meet the coequal goals. The NRC report can be downloaded at this link: http://search.nap.edu/nap-cgi/de.cgi?term=bdcp
The Bay Institute and other environmental groups (NGOs) have invested intensive effort working with BDCP. They have identified many problems, including those also reported by NRC, and offered suggestions to help BDCP develop a plan that actually helps restore the Delta's native fish populations. The problems include: BDCP's objectives remain undefined, scientific analyses are deeply flawed or non-existent, fish biology analysis has been deferred to biologists employed by water contractors, and key decisions have been made without public scrutiny. BDCP has made little progress on flow needs for the Delta and none on reducing reliance on Delta exports. Instead, water contractors continue to press for even larger exports. NGO correspondences which describe these and other problems are available at: http://www.baydeltaconservationplan.com/BDCPPlanningProcess/Correspondence.aspx
Water4Fish is extremely concerned about the BDCP. While it claims that water supply reliability and ecosystem restoration are co-equal goals, the above information suggests otherwise. If BDCP remains on its present course then fish and ecosystem restoration are unlikely to be the end products. Instead, the Delta's fish and wildlife resources and the economy they support may be at risk of destruction. We understand that BDCP planners have a tough job. Solving California's decades-old water problems is no easy task. That said, we believe the process is headed in the wrong direction. More information about BDCP can be found at this link: http://baydeltaconservationplan.com/Home.aspx
Delta Conveyance
Water4Fish is not necessarily opposed to a new conveyance system if it is actually designed and operated to protect the Delta and its fisheries. We don’t believe it’s feasible to stop all Delta water exports. Water is needed for urban, industrial, and agricultural uses. The design and operation of today's system, in combination with upstream management, have caused or contributed to a disastrous set of problems. These include inadequate freshwater flows, altered flow patterns and reverse flows, salmon migration disruptions, crashing populations of salmon and other desirable fish, and the spread of destructive invasive species. We would be willing to consider a new system if it offers enough improvement over the current system.
Some scientists have raised other concerns about today's conveyance system. These include its reliance on aging Delta levees and the location of the fresh water intakes in the south Delta. They warn a time may come when the system will no longer provide a reliable water supply. They predict that sea level rise is likely to move salt water into the western and southern Delta, close to the pumps. Climate change may also cause more frequent and severe floods. Severe high water events in combination with land subsidence in Delta islands would put increased pressure on the levees and create higher risks of levee failures. Some Delta stakeholders have countered that a robust program of levee maintenance and repair can mitigate the risks of levee failures. The map at this link shows the Delta levees: http://www.ppic.org/content/pubs/report/R_207JLMap2_2.pdf
Scientists also warn that many levees could fail catastrophically in the event of a strong earthquake near the Delta. It may not be economically feasible to strengthen many levees to no-fault seismic standards. Some Delta islands have subsided to 15 feet or more below sea level. Multiple levee failures could cause water to rush in and fill the islands. If this happens during a period of low to moderate Delta inflows, it could pull enough salt water into the Delta interior to make water there too salty for drinking and agriculture. That could shut off water deliveries. The damage may or may not be quickly repairable depending on extent and severity. Water supply disruption costs combined with costs to repair multiple broken levees and flooded islands could be in the billions of dollars. Some people believe these risks are greatly exaggerated. However, the U.S. Geological Survey reported that seismic risks in the Delta are probably even greater than previously believed. The map at this link shows land subsidence in the Delta: http://www.ppic.org/content/pubs/report/R_207JLMap2_4.pdf
The purpose of any new system should be to meet the co-equal goals of restoring the ecosystem and increasing reliability of the water supply. Increasing reliability means reducing the risks of water supply disruption from regulatory requirements, earthquakes, floods and sea level rise. It does not mean increasing water export volumes. In fact, increasing the volume of water that exporters expect will result in a less reliable supply if rainfall limitations cause available volumes to be lower than expected volumes. Any new system should comply with State policy to reduce reliance on Delta exports. It should allow higher freshwater flows and more natural flow patterns than today’s system. It should uphold all applicable protections under state and federal ESA, Clean Water Act, and other environmental protection laws. These improvements, together with habitat restoration and pollution reduction, could help tip the balance back in favor of salmon and other desirable fish. Finally, the benefits of any new system should be very carefully weighed against the costs.
We are not prepared to take a position in favor of any particular conveyance option at this time. It would be premature to take such a position before specific proposals become available and are thoroughly and credibly analyzed. We are strongly opposed to BDCP’s 2010 draft proposal and have serious doubts that BDCP will ever develop an acceptable solution. The decision to proceed with any new system should be driven by sound science and not by the demands of water contractors. It should be based on which option can best meet the co-equal goals of the Delta Reform Act.
The Bay Institute is at the forefront in the fight to protect and restore Sierra Rivers and the Bay-Delta. For an excellent discussion about Delta flow problems, see their report, Gone with the Flow at http://www.bay.org/publications/gone-with-the-flow
For more information and to support Bay Institute, go to http://www.bay.org