Delta water plan emerges for public to view

Strict conservation, new dams and a peripheral canal are all on the table after six weeks of closed-door negotiations to solve the state's water crisis and restore the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta ecosystem. Leaders in the state Senate and Assembly are still discussing how to pay for the plan, which could cost $9.4 billion. The Legislature could vote on the plan as soon as the end of the week. State Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg, D-Sacramento, said that he did not want the proposal to "linger" and that the overhaul that has been decades in the making has a "momentum that did not exist before." Water for 24 million people in California - about two-thirds of the state's population - flows through the delta system, which has a series of levees and canals at great risk of failing in a natural disaster such as an earthquake. The plan has several parts, including the creation of a Delta Stewardship Council that would have broad oversight of the delta and the ability to approve a peripheral canal. It would lead the effort to restore the delta and improve the state's water supply. Additionally, the plan would mandate a 20 percent reduction in urban per capita water use by 2020, though there may be exceptions for cities including San Francisco that have aggressive conservation practices. Also included are groundwater monitoring and increased penalties for illegal water diversion...read more