Opinion: California’s Bay-Delta ecosystem needs regulatory protection
California’s Bay-Delta is in trouble, and its outdated water regulations need to catch up with the challenge. For a generation, the State Water Resources Control Board has not updated legally required and much needed rules for sharing water between the environment and other water uses throughout the Bay-Delta watershed. These new rules should result in additional flows for this water-starved system to protect fish and wildlife and improve water quality. Instead of finishing more than a decade of work and establishing long-overdue protections for the Bay-Delta ecosystem, the state is banking on voluntary agreements among water users to guide its actions. Some voluntary agreement proponents suggest there must be a choice between such agreements to provide flows and habitat and updated environmental protections.
-By Felicia Marcus, visiting fellow at Stanford University Water in the West Program; Michael Kiparsky, water program director at UC Berkeley’s Center for Law, Energy & the Environment (CLEE); Nell Green Nylen, senior research fellow at CLEE; and Dave Owen, a professor at UC Law San Francisco.Related articles: