An interview with...

Chris Cabaldon
W. Sac. City Council Member

 

Could you paint a brief picture of the Delta before this area was settled by Europeans?

Well, the Delta, it's a naturally occurring resource in California, although it looked very different before human settlement than it does today. The Delta happens because all of the water flowing from the major river systems in California - the Sacramento River being the principle one, but also all of the Sierra rivers (the Mokolumne, the Cosumnes, the San Joaquin as well) - all come together and there's only one way out, and that's through the Carquinas Straits and to the Golden Gate and beyond. So they all come together here, and they deposit a significant amount of sediment. That helped to raise some of the land levels, sometimes to create islands, but more often just to make shallow water. And that created a lot of vegetation, and it's actually the die-back of that vegetation every year that's helped create the peat over time - the soils in the Delta that raised up the Delta even further, to create the rudiments of the beginning islands in the Delta. Then humans came on board and decided they wanted to keep those islands year round for agriculture, and started to make the levees that have survived to this day in the Delta, and made the land permanent. So it's been here for a long time, and it's always been a major ecosystem for birds and for fish, and that has sustained itself to this day.

What was it that sparked the effort to restore the Delta?

Well, the Delta -- outside of the Delta region -- has two perceptions in the rest of Califonria. Southern California, the Delta means basically a big pipe system that's up north somewhere that funnels water to Southern California, and to agriculture in the southern San Joaquin Valley - because about 75% of the water use in California is south of Sacramento, and about 75% of the water comes from north of Sacramento. So the Delta has just been the most significant part of that pipe system for some Californians. And in other parts of California, the Delta was kind of this abstract concept where there was a lot of wildlife but…it didn't really have any…it didn't have any life to it itself. It was probably about ten years ago now - just over ten years ago - that the legislature realized that there was a real problem with urban encroachment; that as the Bay Area was starting to grow - but also as places like Sacramento and the Stockton region were starting to have more urban development - that there was a lot of pressure to grow into the Delta. The land was affordable. It's flat. It presents all kinds of waterfront development opportunities. So the pressure to fill in the Delta was enormous, and there was… Finally folks realized, just like the coast in the early 70s or the San Francisco Bay at just about the same time, that the Delta was a really critical threatened resource, and the state had to step in to prevent it from being overrun by development.

In our last interview, you said that the decision had been made to say, "Stop! No more development on the Delta." Have people gotten the message, or is there still pressure to build up there?

There's a remarkable consensus that the Delta is too precious to overrun with concrete. In some ways, it's been less contentious than it was on the coast, or around the San Francisco Bay. And maybe it's because we hadn't developed as much around it, yet. We saw it coming and we learned our lessons from the coast - and this is kind of our inland coast. And we realized that what was happening there was going to happen here; it was inevitable unless we took aggressive action. So I think the passage of the Delta Protection Act, just about ten years ago; there haven't been major pressures for urban development inside the most - the core part of the Delta, what we call the "Primary Zone." That the pressures for urban development have diminished substantially. Really now the major battles are between the other uses in the Delta: recreation, agriculture, water supply, and habitat. And those are the new debate inside the Delta about what kind of a future we want to have.

What kind of a balance are we trying to strike with those elements?

Well, we're trying to support all of them together, and to create both a balance of those land uses, but also to marry them together in a way that you can have agriculture that is compatible with the kind of wildlife that relies upon the Delta for its survival. And that… We are starting to see some really exciting experiments and innovations in the Delta in particular about wildlife-friendly agriculture. So that's one example of where… We're trying to take the position that you can't just divide up the Delta into East Berlin and say, "This quadrant is for wildlife, this part is for agriculture. This part is for recreation. We've got to figure out how to get it all right together. Recreation is the same way; it is compatible with agriculture. It's compatible with some habitat, and some kinds of recreation. We've just got to figure out how to make sure we get it right. But we know now that we're going to keep the urban encroachment out; that the focus has got to be on protecting, probably at the core, habitat and agriculture. That's critical both for themselves, but also for the water supply and water quality issues that are of such concern to the rest of California.

There are species that now called the Delta home thatdidn't before it was developed. Does that create any dilemmas: how much can we restore, and how much should we preserve "as is"?

It creates some challenges. It's not as black and white as it might be in some eco-systems, because the Delta itself, by virtue of the way the levees have been constructed and the islands have been maintained as islands, the habitat of the Delta, the ecology of the Delta has changed dramatically. So it's still a very critical ecosystem, but it's a different ecosystem than it was when humans started to develop it in a really serious way. So there are still some native species there - the Delta smelt, that species of fish was there a long time ago; it's still there. But there's a lot of other species that have come to use it and rely upon it that might not even survive in the Delta of a hundred years ago, given that ecology. So our challenge is to figure out how to sustain t he overall ecosystem, and that means protecting against invasive species. But we're not taking the position that if it wasn't there 500 years ago, then it doesn't belong in the Delta. The Delta is a balanced healthy ecosystem that's got its challenges like many others do. But we're looking to try to maintain the health of the ecosystem, not take it back to some pristine state.

Could you give us a couple examples of some wildlife that is endangered or threatened in the region, and what's being done to protect them?

Well, there are several species of fish that are endangered in the Delta because of water pollution in particular. Water quality problems are the biggest challenge for fish and other related species in the Delta -- mercury being a primary one of those pollutants. And it's a tough one because when you first look at the problem, you say, "Well, let's shut down all those industries that are pumping mercury into the Delta." And that's a very, very minute part of the problem. Most of the mercury is coming from either natural sources, or sources associated with human activities that ended a long time ago. So how do you get at that, or arsenic that's coming out mines that have been long-abandoned are still creating some major challenges in the Delta. How you solve those problems becomes really difficult because you can't simply pin the blame on somebody and tell them to stop doing evil things. You've got to figure out, how do we as a society take collective responsibility for restoring the health of that ecosystem, because the fish directly are feeling the impact of that. We see fish kills each year - significant fish kills after the first rain, because it takes all of the oil and the pesticides on our lawns and all the other chemicals that make it onto city streets and farms, and dumps them into the rivers all at once. That has major impacts on wildlife of all kinds in the Delta. And so they're a threatened species. But it's not just about the fish. Even if you don't care about the fish, you ought to care about the people who are eating the fish. And a lot of folks rely on Delta fishing for their livelihoods - either commercially, or as a significant part of their diet, which is unhealthy. Most of the species in the Delta in many parts of the Delta are unsafe to eat, more than once or twice a month - and you've got folks that are eating them daily, as part of their diets. So it's a real challenge not just for the wildlife in and of itself, for its natural value and its ecological heritage, but also for human health and for the economic sustainability of the Delta region.

You said that most of the pollutants aren't coming from specific, contemporary sources…but are there any particular concerns that we do need to address?

There are still some, and one of the major challenges, for example, we're going to have to deal with in the coming years is going to be dairies and other kinds of agricultural providers that have had a lower standard of controls placed on them than cities or industries have had. And that made sense when we were trying to deal with our goal of making agriculture as economically competitive as possible - which is still an important public policy goal. But now we've got to look at in California - partly because it's the right thing to do, partly because the federal EPA is saying, "You must finally take responsibility for this." But what our new approach is going to be is, "What's the total amount of pollution in the river?" And then how are we going to get that down to a level that protects human health, whether you're drinking or swimming or fishing in it. Protects the wildlife, protects the over all ecosystem. What's that level, and how are we going to manage the pollution down to that level, or eliminate it altogether? That's a very different paradigm than just saying we're not going to let any big factories dump tons of pollution into the water. It's kind of the way that we dealt with air pollution in the past. It used to be, "We'll just make sure that we don't allow big smokestacks to pump a lot of pollution into the air." And we kind of ignored the fact that most of us in our cars were the ones producing the vast majority of the pollution. And we said, "Well, that's just too complicated to deal with. It's easier to make sure that the factory has to get a permit for their pollution than it is to deal with all the little people like each one of us that's causing the pollution." And really we're now getting to that point in water pollution, because as I say, one of the biggest problems in the water quality of the Delta - and in fact all of the rivers and streams in California - is urban runoff. It's agricultural runoff. It isn't the industrial pollution any longer; it isn't the sewer plants, which are now pumping out water in many cases that you can drink right at the end of the pipe. It really each one of us making small decisions about what we do in our front yards and in our driveways, or what a farmer does on the farm that is determining whether or not we're going to have a healthy Delta.

The "Flex Your Power" campaign was pretty successful in getting people to conserve, or at least think about, the energy they use. Is there any similar effort in terms of water?

Yeah, there is, and a lot of local areas - Sacramento is one of the regions that leads in this area in the state - are mounting aggressive campaigns to try to educate the public about the consequences of our little decisions. You know, when we decide how much or what pesticide to apply to try to control our gardens. Whether we need it or not, or how much we need, a lot of us don't pay attention to the fact that that's going to have an impact on water quality. You know, even the little fish that get put onto manholes and curbs that say, "Don't dump pollution here because it leads directly to rivers and streams" - that's shown to have had a significant effect. So public education can make a difference, and we're going to have to look towards that kind of approach - because we're not going to require everybody, when they go to Safeway, to get a permit to buy something to wash their car with. That's not the future that we're looking at. It means all of us are going to have to take responsibility for it, to recognize that our decisions have real consequences for the health of the ecosystem, and our own human health, and the quality of our drinking water, and we've got to do something about it individually.

How did the Bay-Delta Commission come about, and what is its ultimate mission?

Well, there's a couple of them. There's -- the Delta Protection Commission has got the primary responsibility of protecting the Delta against urban encroachment, and protect the balance of the Delta land use, to make sure that agriculture, recreation, and the habitat of the Delta are all preserved. And not just glossed over with shellac like it's in a museum. I mean, there are lively Delta towns that still have a lot of evolution to occur -- but to really, to think about how to maintain a vibrant Delta in all of its dimensions. So the Delta Protection Commission, which is made of principally of residents of the Delta from Contra Costa County, Solano County, Yolo County, Sacramento County - all across the Delta - is charged with that mission, of making sure that the Delta doesn't get overrun by development of any kind, and that we protect those land uses. At the same, there are other agencies - I serve on the regional water quality board - that are there to protect the quality of the water that's getting into the Delta from all over the rivers and streams of California. And that means you're talking about water quality in the far north of California, in the Sierras, in Merced, in Fresno - all of which ultimately drains into the Delta. So it's a major challenge. Protecting the Delta doesn't just mean drawing a line around the Delta itself and saying, "We're not going to allow any pollution here." It really means taking responsibility to address the overall water pollution and water quality issues for the whole - for the entire Central Valley, for the whole Great Valley., And then there's the whole CalFed process, and CalFed is critical because CalFed is an attempt by the state and federal government to work together to try to do a couple of things - and all of which have to do with creating that balance in the Delta. CalFed's main interest are in making sure that there's good quality water for drinking and for agriculture and industrial use throughout California, and then more important to me is their responsibility just to protect the ecosystem of the Delta, and the people that live there, and the wildlife, and the flora and the fauna that are in the Delta. That's a very big challenge for the state and federal governments to undertake, so CalFed is an effort to bring all of the different agencies - the dozens of agencies at the state and federal level that have some responsibility for the Delta - get them on the same page and put real money behind it, in order to save habitat, to find ways of improving the water supply and water storage challenges, without taking water away from the critical habitats in the Delta, so that we can meet the state's overall need for water, without doing it at the price of sacrificing the Delta.

You mentioned the dozens of state and federal agencies with some oversight of the Delta. Does that create more of a problem because it's so labyrinthine, or does it help to have so many agencies working on the same problem?

Well, the reason why CalFed exists is precisely because the labyrinth of agencies has been so overwhelming in the past. And not for lack of good faith and good intention, but the Department of Food and Agriculture at the state level is charged with making sure that we protect agriculture and that we have a strong agricultural economy in California and in the Delta. On the other hand, the Department of Fish and Game just down the street is responsible for making sure that we protect that wildlife of the Delta, and make sure that that thrives. And they're two different agencies, and don't report to the same Cabinet secretary, and so it's a built in structure for mixed messages to be sent - to put it charitably. Then you have the whole layer of t federal government, and you would assume that the state Department of Fish and Game and the U.S. Department of Fish and Wildlife are always on the same page. But it isn't the case; it doesn't happen naturally. So CalFed is really an aggressive effort to try to force that collaboration, and I think what's been remarkable about it is that it's been as successful as it has. It hasn't come up with all the answers. It's created some problems that didn't exist before, but it has brought all those agencies to the table, I think partly because there's been real resources to support it. And so everybody has seen that we can have all boats rise together. We can do better for habitat. We can do better for water quality, better for water supply, better for the history and the culture and the future of the Delta communities. We can accomplish all those goals together if we collaborate to try to build public support and build the resource space for it. It's one of the reasons why the challenge today is so significant, because if there aren't the resources because of the state's budget challenges, or because the federal government isn't prepared to support it in the way that it has in the past, then the entire house of cards could fall apart, and we could end up back in a situation where it's each agency for itself, and we don't have the kind of overall solution that's going to be required. We can't have business as usual in the Delta, or in California water policy, and meet any of those goals. And it will mean that California will start to be too thirsty for its growth patterns. It will mean that we'll see more and more species endangered and extinct. It means that the Delta itself - the economy of the Delta, the towns of the Delta will start to wither away and become ghost towns. There are very severe consequences if we don't continue to act and collaborate through the CalFed process - scary though it sometimes is.

You stated earlier that many of the Delta's problems begin well upstream. Are there any particular threats that stand out to you, in terms of the rivers and streams that feed into the Delta?

Well, I mean, one of the major sources of pollution that's becoming more and more problematic are the mines that are principally in this area -- the Sierra, some in the coast ranges -- that are discharging pollution and for whom there's nobody to be held responsible. The mines went out of business many, many years ago. They'll be emitting pollution for centuries, just because of the mining practices and what has been unearthed in the mining process. And so that's a significant source of pollution that you cannot order anybody to turn off. And so that does affect many of the streams that are coming out of old mining areas in the gold country, for example. Another problem river is the San Joaquin, which flows into the Delta, which in many parts of the area is comprised almost entirely of agricultural runoff, and storm water runoff. There's not a lot of natural flow left in the San Joaquin River. And so the challenges to do with pesticides and urban pollutants are very severe in a river like that one. In the Stockton area, where the San Joaquin River enters the Delta, the levels of oxygen in the water are too low to support fish of most species. So we're talking about pretty severe implications of this. But one of the major challenges that the state is grappling with today is what to do about agricultural runoff. As I said, with both state and federal air and water quality - both - we've created a privileged position for agriculture in the past. We've said, "Look, we recognize that agriculture is already so marginal economically in California, but it's so important to us economically, and for food security, that we're going to lower the level of impact in terms of regulation for agriculture in air and water quality. And that's meant that industry and cities have had to bear more of the burden, in order to offset that impact. But out standards for water quality are rising - and they should be! That means…you get to a point where you cannot squeeze any more out of industry, that the technologies have gotten to the point that there's very little pollution that's being created in either the air or the water by many industries. As I say, cities are now, just as of this year, being required when they do new sewer plants to treat the sewage in such a way that it is drinkable as soon as it comes out of the pipe. It's that clean. So there's only so much more you can squeeze out of cities and industry, and it's going to be time for agriculture to figure out how it can contribute to the solutions in water quality as well. And that's going to be a major challenge. Some have said, "Let's just require all farms to meet the same standards as factories." And that would put most of California agriculture out of business, for that to happen instantly. So we've got to figure out how to do it in a way that's going to preserve agriculture as an economically viable part for the California economy, but that also recognizes that we've got to have clean water in the Delta for all the reasons that we've been talking about -- whether it's habitat, recreation, human consumption, and drinking. Whatever the reason is, we've got to have a clean water regime in the Delta; otherwise we're going to be sabotaging the rest of California. So that's probably the most important challenge over the next couple of years, is figuring out how agriculture can be part of the solution in improving the quality of water.

We seem to be a little more sensible in the way we plan and build diversions and dams than we used to, but do we still have a lot to learn?

I think there is a broader consensus, either by folks who agree or at least by folks who are accepting of the fact that a majority of us agree, that the old practice of taking sensitive valleys like the Hecheche and damming them is not the way to provide water security and water storage and water use into the future. The price that we have to pay for that is too severe to justify doing that into the future. And so that's caused us to think about other alternatives, because water storage should be part of the solution in the long run, to make sure that we've got adequate supply for all the purposes that we need, including protecting the species in the Delta, but also making sure that there's enough for you and I to drink each day. But it can't come at the cost of destroying some of the most sensitive and precious ecosystems in California. So we're looking different alternatives, all of which have their own challenges. You can't talk about changing the course of nature to benefit human development without having some consequences, and so none of the choices are perfect, but they're all better than the strategies of the past. And they involve things like storage off-stream, so rather than damming a stream that happens to be going through a pristine valley, today you find another -- you build a reservoir somewhere off the stream in order to provide some storage. Or one of the hot topics at the moment is whether or not to flood one or more of the islands in the Delta and turn it into a reservoir inside the Delta. Because those are not natural islands, and they don't support -- the islands themselves don't support the diversity of wildlife that the rest of the Delta does. So there are a lot of options that are out there that allow you to look at storage in a new way without completely trashing the ecosystem that provides the water supply in the first place.

In our last interview, you also mentioned that there was a shift in the fight for water supply -- from a North-South conflict to more fighting within the region, in terms of use for residential versus agricultural versus industrial purposes. Has there been any more agreement lately within the Valley about how water should be distributed and used?

Yeah, there is some progress on that front but the battlelines are still being redrawn between the… I mean, those of us in the public still think of it as a North-South flight even though it's been more of an East-West fight, because the water is not generated in San Francisco any more than it is in Los Angeles. And we happen to be fortunate here in the Sacramento region, that we live where the water is. But it's not as if we produced it! I mean, we don't get up each morning like a farmer at 4 in the morning and harvest the water. It just happens to be going by where we live. But it's not ours in any kind of moral sense of the term. But I think we have a greater appreciation of the impacts of diversion of that water than folks who are 400 miles away, who only see the water coming. They don't see the results of taking that away from the ecosystems that are there. So I don't know that the underlying issue has ever really been North-South, but certainly the questions within the water use community - where that water is going is still the critical one. And really, what I think the end result is going to end up - is going to be is that we've all got to be a heck of a lot more efficient in our water use. Look more at water recycling, at reducing the amount of consumption, and conjunctive use with groundwater. I mean, there's a whole range of opportunities that are out there for us if we star to think of water as a limited resource -- which we all know it is, but we don't act that way when we use it. So that really is going to be the challenge in every one of those sectors, but before we get to that point…it's almost natural in our American society to first point fingers at one another and say, "No no no, I'm not the problem. You're using too much water, and if only agriculture would stop using so much water! If only industry would stop using so much water! Or if only we would stop watering our lawns, then it would all go away." The challenge is going to be just like it is for the pollution challenge, which is, we've all got to do a lot more at the individual level and in communities and in business to reduce the amount of water that we need in order to have healthy society and a healthy economy. 26:41

What's the ideal picture for the Delta in the future?

Well, the Delta will look a lot like it looks today in some pockets. We've had a really significant amount of success in the Delta in all the arenas that are critical. And we're not talking about taking a blank canvas and making a Delta out of it. There already is a healthy Delta there in a lot of respects. Some of the habitat restoration and ecosystem restoration programs that have been undertaken in just the last few years in the Delta have been amazingly successful, that hjave provided habitat that has increased the populations of a lot of species in the Delta significantly. And some of them are jhust near here: the Stone Lakes Refuge, for example in the Cosumnes River area, has been very successful as a model of ecosystem restoration. And so we're creating a Delta that in some senses is almost like a national wildlife area, and in some places may eventually become that. And I thinkw e are now experimenting with new ways of doing agriculture that is both economically sustainable and is environmentally sustainable. And that requires a lot of change at a time when agriculture is already, as I say, very marginal. And so I think we all have to help farmers not just understand why they need to be part of the solution, but we need to understand that every time we ask them to do something new, we risk putting them out of business. So we've got to take that challenge collectively, like it's all of our problem and all of our opportunity. So I think that a Delta that's focused principally in those two areas - agriculture and habitat - really is going to be the healthiest future. But I also happen to think personally that we've got to get the public -- the broader public of California, certainly of this region -- engaged with the Delta in amuch more personal way. So that we don't just think of the Delta as some place where there's a lot of water, and where fish and birds seem to have a good time. That we've got to connect with it in a way that, like folks go to the beach at the coast, or they see the Bay -- the San Francisco Bay - every day as they go from home to work or got to school. They are able to appreciate that resource in a way, I think, that too many of us have never done with the Delta. So that means increasing our attention to things like recreation of all kinds -- and I don't just mean boating and waterskiing, but the full range of recreation, of environmental education, creating things like trails through the Delta that make it possible for the rest of us in California to engage the Delta as the really critical but beautiful resource that it is. And ultimately, I think if you do that, then you start to build the support to protect things like water quality, and habitat, and agriculture, and the land use patterns of the Delta.

On the one hand you're saying that people need to be able to get physically closer to the Delta -- but of course the more that do, the more danger there is to the ecosystem. How hard will it be to strike the right balance?

You certainly don't want it to become like Folsom Lake, which is a great resource, but Folsom Lake has turned mainly into a flood storage and recreation area, to the extent that any wildlife or anybody else wants to use it… You certainly couldn't conduct farming on the shores of Folsom Lake, given the intensity of use there. So no, you're absolutely right. You don't want to turn the Delta into just a playground for jet skiers and wind surfers; that can't be the point. But the Delta - one of the beauties of the Delta is that it's huge. Very few folks appreciate the scale of the Delta from Stockton to Concord, up to Sacramento, and down to even past Tracy. There's so much of the Delta that if you cerate small opportunities for recreation, for trails, for environmental education throughout the Delta then you can really minimize the overall human impact at any one time.

Presentation also made possible by a grant from
the Great Valley Center