Activists sue to shut down Delta pumps 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. You cannot list everything (as an endangered species) and you can't protect species by species." By invoking the public trust doctrine, a legal concept that dates to the Roman Empire, the environmental groups seek to force regulators to consider the environment, recreation, aesthetics and other values to be passed to future generations in the Delta much more rigorously. The lawsuit, filed in Sacramento County Superior Court by the California Sportfishing Protection Alliance, the California Water Impact Network and retired federal biologist Felix Smith, seeks to stop water deliveries from the Delta until the massive state and federal pumping stations near Tracy come into compliance with laws that the environmentalists say are being broken....