Free Republic

(orginally pub 2/20, edited 2/29.) From his driveway along the Sacramento River south of Freeport, the view to the east offers a peek at the snow-capped Sierra Nevada. When that snow melts, it flows relentlessly by, just across the levee road from Stone's front windows. From the state and federal governments' point of view, his 20-acre property in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta is an ideal spot for one of the five large pumping stations they're proposing to feed what may be the largest water tunnel ever contemplated in North America. ....Twin 33-foot-diameter tunnels would carry a portion of the Sacramento...

Reaching back to the laws of ancient Rome, environmentalists sued Monday to cut off Delta water operations and dramatically shake up the long-term balance between economic and environmental needs in the region. If it succeeds, the lawsuit would shift the focus from the worsening conflict between individual species of fish and the amount of water pumped out of the Delta to a comprehensive attempt to balance competing interests. "The only things that are already protected are already endangered," said Michael Jackson, a lawyer for the environmental groups. "But what's happening is the whole bottom is falling out of the ecosystem....

Sacramento and New Orleans are 2,000 miles apart. But when the Crescent City was submerged in what the media insisted on calling "toxic gumbo" following Hurricane Katrina, it brought overdue attention to the neglected levees of California's Delta. That's the good news. The bad news is that estimates for the amount of money needed to completely fix the Delta levees could range up to $1.5 trillion, according to Ron Ott, deputy director of the California Bay-Delta Authority. Ott came up with that shocking figure by comparing the Delta system to Holland; that country is in the midst of investing $2.5...

An invasive clam that has dramatically altered the food web in Suisun Bay is emerging as a leading suspect in a sweeping ecological crash just upstream in the Delta. Scientists racing to figure out what is going on in the West Coast's largest estuary say the clam is the basis for one of the most promising theories to emerge since it was confirmed nine months ago that numerous fish and other organisms are in rapid decline.The one-inch clam is believed to have arrived during the 1980s in ship ballast water from Asia. It was thought to be mostly confined to...