Another risk to state's water supply

[slackmaster]

Here's a nice grim earthquake-related scenario to go with your Saturday brunch. The levee break west of Stockton threatened to shut down I-4 while I was up in the Bay Area last weekend. I had planned on taking 4 the whole way up to gold country for the scenery, but chose the 205/5 route instead to avoid the potential closure.

When an aging levee ruptured last week near Stockton and turned 11,000 acres of rich farmland into a murky lake, it offered a preview of the catastrophe water experts have been warning Californians about for more than a decade....

...Bad as the situation is – millions of dollars in losses from drowned crops, lost jobs, submerged homes, ruined equipment and repair costs – it could have been much worse. And someday it will be, unless a permanent remedy is found for the systemic ills threatening the state's most important public asset.

The Sacramento-San Joaquin river delta is all but invisible to most Californians. Shaped like a huge triangle with one point near Sacramento, another near Tracy and the third near Pittsburg, the delta is a quiet landscape of green fields, drooping willows, small towns and twisting waterways that looks like a slice of coastal Louisiana sutured onto California's Central Valley.

Outsiders seldom visit intentionally except to fish; those who blunder inadvertently onto the delta's narrow roads often are alarmed to find themselves looking up at large boats floating past, a reminder that much of the land in the region lies below sea level....

For full article please see http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20040612/news_1e12krist.html