Save the Delta, save the salmon

Save the Delta, save the salmon: Some recent articles in local and statewide newspapers have left the impression that salmon populations are coming back (“75 salmon return to Napa River to spawn Upvalley,” Dec. 6). The contrary is true — this just happens to be a freak wet year. We are beyond the tipping point toward extinction of the species. We are about to kill off a historical and critical element of the West. Without salmon there is no West.

Salmon and other river and Delta fisheries are suffering from several onslaughts: degradation of tributary waters, barriers to fish passage, point source and non-point source pollutants, pesticides and fertilizers, dewatering of rivers and the Delta to quench out-of-basin municipal and subsidized agricultural uses, etc. The hard reality is that we live in a semi-arid desert and have too many people living in the state. We just happen to have the good fortune to be flanked by the Sierras and the overburdened waters that course down its slopes.


Should we be delivering subsidized water to grow a subsidized monsoon cotton crop in a desert with marginal alkaline soil that, at best, has 10 to 20 years of productivity left? Then there is the absurdity of those farmers proclaiming themselves to be “struggling family farmers” — most are huge agribusiness interests that are fleecing the system at the cost of the destruction of the Delta and its fisheries.

You may remember the fix-all peripheral canal idea that was killed many years ago. A new water grab is taking on a new form and name and is called the peripheral tunnel. Northern California needs to kill this idea in its infancy.

Write, call or personally contact your state and federal representatives, letting them know you oppose any further water appropriations or diversions out of the Delta. Ask for science-based management of rivers, the Delta and fisheries. Demand that hard decisions be made to restore the Delta. If that means that farmers using subsidized water to irrigate crops in the desert lose water, then so be it. If that means that municipalities are required to use less water and develop grey water systems, desalination, etc., then so be it — and why has it taken so long? Do we really need to use drinking water for industrial uses?

John and Jane Q. Public can do their part too. Use less water — demand that your community, town or city develop better conservation programs and develop grey water systems. Limit the use of fertilizers and pesticides. In rain incidents these toxins wash into drains and tributaries that run into rivers, killing off the sustaining microorganisms in the water column that aquatic organisms depend on

Posted in: environment