Delta progress glacially slow, task force says
Alex Breitler
The Stockton Record
06/02/2009
SACRAMENTO - A governor-appointed task force that spent 20 months studying the Delta says lawmakers are not moving fast enough to implement its suggestions, including construction of a peripheral canal.
The former Delta Vision Blue Ribbon Task Force - now an independent foundation - gave the governor and the Legislature a grade of "incomplete" in a report discussed Monday.
Little or no progress has been made on four of the task force's seven broad goals for the Delta, the foundation charged.
The governor has never directly responded to those goals and lacks an integrated water policy, while there seems little chance of developing "coherent" legislation to advance the goals, according to Monday's report.
"The problem is the choices are tough, painful and political," said Phil Isenberg, former Sacramento mayor and chairman of the task force. "If this were easy to solve, it would have been solved in the last 30 to 40 years."
But, he said, the urgency of the state's water woes call for a more aggressive approach.
The original task force recommended, among other things, that a canal be built to send water around the Delta, although freshwater flows through the estuary would also continue.
The task force also called for consideration of the Delta as a unique place, for a new governance structure and for treatment of water supply and the environment as coequal goals.
Joe Grindstaff, deputy secretary for water policy in the Schwarzenegger administration, said he's hopeful legislation will move forward this year. He acknowledged, though, that a large water bond to pay for new infrastructure might be a tough sell for 2010.
"We have been engaged in this from the beginning of this administration," he said. "The governor has been consistent about wanting comprehensive improvements, and what (the task force has) done has helped us on that path."
He said he believes the goal remains to break ground on a peripheral canal in 2011, a timeline some have called overly optimistic.
