Bay-Delta Initiative
The San Francisco Bay and the Delta created by the joining of the Sacramento and San Joaquin Rivers are two interconnected water systems that create one of the largest estuaries in North America, the Bay-Delta (Delta).
In natural conditions, the fresh water from the Sacramento and San Joaquin Rivers would enter the Delta and eventually mix with the Bay’s salt water, creating optimal conditions along the way for many species of fish and wildlife.
The Bay-Delta is in biological meltdown because the estuary has been deprived of more than half of its historical flows. The Delta’s hydrograph has been turned upside down and its waterways degraded by urban and agricultural pollution.
Since its inception, California Sportfishing Protection Alliance (CSPA) has worked to protect and restore this important estuary. CSPA does this by participating in regulatory procedures and by taking legal action against polluters and state projects that threaten the health of the Bay-Delta by diverting more freshwater away from the estuary.
Key Facts About The Bay-Delta Crisis
California is in a water crisis because the state has over-promised, wasted, and inequitably distributed scarce water resources. Legal rights to water exceed the average amount of water that actually falls from the sky by a factor of five.
As a result, too much water is diverted away from the Delta leaving the ecosystem in critical condition. In 2022, the Department of Fish and Wildlife found zero Delta smelt in their surveys of the Delta. In 2016 the California Department of Fish and Wildlife’s fall midwater trawl abundance indices showed that since 1967, longfin smelt had declined by 99.9%, and splittail by 100.0%.
All four runs of Chinook salmon populations are also in rapid decline. In 2022 the number of fall-run Chinook salmon that returned to spawn declined by 40% in just one year. In 2023, due to historically low Chinook salmon populations, the California Fish and Game Commission closed commercial and recreational salmon fishing in the ocean off California and in Central Valley rivers.
CSPA has petitioned the federal and state government to list California’s white sturgeon as “threatened” under the federal and state Endangered Species Acts. California white sturgeon are native only to the Delta and its watershed.
The Center for Biological Diversity has also reported that “at least a dozen of the Delta’s original 29 indigenous fish species have been eliminated entirely or are currently threatened with extinction.”
The Delta Needs Higher Flows
CSPA advocates for increased Delta inflow and outflow. CSPA has concluded that increased Delta inflow and outflow are critically necessary to protect the estuary.
In 2010 the State Water Board agreed with this conclusion in its report of flows necessary to protect public trust resources. The Department of Fish and Wildlife concurred in its 2010 report of flows and biological objectives necessary to protect fisheries.
Many independent scientists, academics, fishery agency biologists, and consultants to environmental and fishing organizations, have all concluded that the Bay-Delta needs increased inflows and outflows.
This crisis cannot be solved with engineering and concrete. In the near term, more water to protect public trust values translates to less diversions of water, both upstream of the Delta and for export from the Delta.
- Above all, bring water allocation into balance with actual supplies and reduce water exported from the Delta, in part by retiring drainage-impaired lands on the west side of the San Joaquin Valley.
- Route freshwater through the Delta and increase outflow to restore and protect the estuary’s water quality and fisheries.
- Raise and strengthen existing Delta levees to withstand potential earthquakes, floods and rising sea levels for a fraction of the cost of peripheral conveyance.
- Increase reliance on local water supplies by investing equivalent dollars in reclamation, reuse and conservation.
For further discussion, see also the Revised Environmental Water Caucus Report.
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Bay-Delta Initiative