Preserving the Delta
California’s Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta is the largest estuary on the West Coast. Fresh water flows into the Delta from numerous rivers, including the Sacramento and San Joaquin, creating an enormous and lush mosaic of rivers, wetlands, floodplains, and uplands. The Delta supports hundreds of species and iconic wildlife — like Chinook salmon, river otters, sandhill cranes, giant garter snakes, salt marsh harvest mice, and Suisun marsh asters. It also provides drinking water for 27 million Californians and agricultural-supply water for hundreds of thousands of acres of land. Most of the supply is pumped from the Delta across long distances to farms and cities in the Central Valley and Southern California.
But the rich Delta ecosystem is under severe threat. Water exports have decreased the amount of fresh water in the Delta itself, changing the ecosystem and impairing water quality. Once-common species like salmon and delta smelt have nearly disappeared. Saltwater intrusion continues to reach further inland, harming wildlife and human communities alike, changing aquatic habitats and disrupting local agriculture. As the ecosystem continues to collapse, water quality will further decline, native species will disappear, and safe water supplies will become more expensive to maintain. A collapsed Delta could even pose a public health hazard.
Fighting Boondoggle Projects
The Center’s Urban Wildlands program is pushing back against costly water infrastructure projects that threaten to destroy the already fragile Delta. We joined a coalition of more than a dozen environmental groups to challenge the Delta Conveyance Project, which would divert billions of gallons of water from the Sacramento River, significantly cutting freshwater flows to the Delta. Another destructive project, the Sites Reservoir, involves building several enormous dams that would store water diverted from the Sacramento River system, where salmon and steelhead populations are already in decline.
As the Trump administration continues to mislead the public about the Delta and threaten additional diversions, protecting this ecosystem is essential for a healthy California. We’re advocating for sufficient freshwater flows into the Delta, fighting boondoggle water infrastructure projects that would further stress the ecosystem, and promoting sustainable water management that keeps water in rivers for the benefit of people and wildlife.
