Brown's Tunnels Could Start in 2018, and Delta Farmers Say They'll Be Devastated
Brett Baker steps off Sutter Island Road and scrambles down the bank of a levee to the edge of Steamboat Slough. It's early August, and at 8 a.m., the thermometer already registers a muggy 75 degrees as the Delta sun rises through an unseasonable gray sky. At Baker's feet is a 6-inch-wide steel pipe that carries water from the slough through the levee and into his family's century-old pear orchard.
The farmer begins explaining how three years ago, at the peak of the drought, river flows grew so weak that salty water from San Francisco Bay crept far inland. State officials responded by proposing an emergency plan to keep the brackish intrusion from fouling the fresh river water: They would build a rock dam to divert the freshwater that flows through this slough — a side channel of the Sacramento River — into another waterway, called Georgiana Slough, that leads to pumping stations near Tracy. Those pumps, in turn, send delta water into two large transport canals to San Joaquin Valley farmers and cities in Southern California.
"They were trying to protect the water that they're contracted to deliver to the San Joaquin Valley and Los Angeles," Baker explains.
But the emergency measure would have left Baker's irrigation pipe sucking saltwater into his pear orchard, killing his crops and spoiling his soil.
Read more: https://www.eastbayexpress.com/oakland/browns-tunnels-could-start-in-2018-and-delta-farmers-say-theyll-be-devastated/Content?oid=8560566
