The Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta is a critical variable in a complex water supply network that stretches across most western United States, where demand outstrips supply. The Delta also supports a substantial portion of the US economy, feeds a large part of the state, is a unique and vital biological resource, and has a rich cultural past. The Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta’s current stewardship incentives in relation to its problems incorporate multilateral projects such as the Bay Delta protection plan, Delta plan, Delta vision process, and Delta risk management. In addition, the sound science approach has been beneficial for the Delta investigation, yet hard to facilitate a certain policy.
Stewardship Framework: Delta Problems
To shed light on Delta’s stewardship catalyst, it is necessary first to identify the problems that exist in its ecosystem. Delta is currently undergoing fast changes that threaten the ecosystem’s integrity. Among the problematic concerns are invasive aquatic species, more regular harmful algal outbursts, dwindling native fish populations, heatwaves, sea-level rise, and continual shifts from drought to flood (Pitzer, 2020). Throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the Delta’s complex diversity of coastal freshwater marsh and floodplain ecosystems was drained and turned into farmland, with levees blocking the tides. After land use changes, oxidation of the Delta’s peat soils resulted in a century of ground subsidence, necessitating ongoing levee expansion to minimize floods.
The decomposition of organic carbon in peat soils is the primary reason for land subsidence in the Delta. The ground was anaerobic under everyday water stress, and organic carbon generated faster than it could disintegrate. Aerobic conditions resulted from agricultural drainage. Under aerobic conditions, microbial activity rapidly oxidized to form the carbon in peat soil. With the exception of a few islands, most of the Delta is now considerably below sea level (Center for Watershed Sciences, n.d.). Scientists believe the rate of change has recently accelerated, fuelled partially by global warming, and is restricting science’s capacity to cope with the situation. Therefore, the challenges expand well beyond natural inconveniences but are also facilitated by science’s inability to develop a strategic plan.
Furthermore, the Delta’s native species are experiencing dramatic population losses, posing a strain on economic growth. Several notable species of fish impacted by Delta export operations are categorized as vulnerable or endangered or will be short. The population loss has already impacted the state’s and federal government’s capacity to export water assets, with hints of yet more limits in the future and significant implications for the nation’s economy.
Another far-reaching problem related to the restoration is the neglect of human intervention and the influence of the board and scientific community. So far, the flexible management approach to restoration in the Delta has primarily focused on learning about environmental phenomena. Monitoring biogeophysical progress and responses to restoration actions enabled a single loop learning (Kraus-Polk & Milligan, 2019). Monitoring norms have primarily ignored the inclusion and pressures of human activities, including regular inspections. Despite broad and project-specific human-use targets, this omission occurs often.
Stewardship Actions and Plans in Search of Possible Solutions
The core idea of any environmental stewardship discourse is action. Stewardship actions are methods, activities, behavior patterns, and innovations used to guard, reestablish, or utilize the environment in a sustainable manner (Bennett et al., 2018). Community actors’ stewardship actions can arise unofficially on a daily basis, stem from official decision-making procedures involving communes or networks, or result from official leading processes or compulsory regulatory guidance.
The Delta Solutions Program was launched by the Center for Watershed Sciences in response to the urgent need for sophisticated technological and policy solutions for the Delta. The measures were aimed by a group of research scientists, engineers, and economists to evaluate the environmental, socioeconomic, and supply of water performance of several future Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta options. Furthermore, the team hopes to create analytical tools that will give fresh insights for overall strategic planning initiatives and help to analyze better suggested future policy changes. Ultimately, the group is dedicated to publicizing its findings, giving its tools to politicians and officials across the state, and continuing to work on long-term Delta solutions in the face of stewarding the environment.
The Delta Solutions Program will be distinguished by creating or improving process decision tools that adequately portray Delta’s complex concerns. Some of these concerns include large-scale water commodity efficiency measures and hydrodynamic features that review the aquatic environment. Ecological models that assess the ecosystem effects of operations or ecosystem rejuvenation endeavors and economic models that examine the expenses and alternative solutions management strategies are examples of these (Center for Watershed Sciences, n.d.). Additionally, the effort is to create this skill inside a comprehensive and integrated analysis framework, which will enhance objective alternative development and comparison.
To govern their processes and regulations, numerous organizations have adopted stewardship principles. One example is the stewardship of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. According to Wright and Boorse (2016), stewardship refers to the acts and programs that administer natural assets and human well-being for the entire community’s benefit. As Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta proposals (2020) state, “multiple ideas for stewardship of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta are now ongoing, including the Bay Delta Conservation Plan, Delta plan, Delta Vision Process, and Risk Management Strategy” (para. 1). Although these principles frequently address particular topics of concern and are generally centered on human needs, they can sometimes serve as more extensive recommendations for society.
Contemporary initiatives to reconstruct the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta include infrastructure planning, recreation flood management, railway transportation network, and watershed management. However, previous efforts and initiatives were mainly focused on the ecology and management of natural aquatic resources. As evidenced by programs such as the Bay Delta protection plan, Delta plan, Delta vision process, and Delta risk management, there is a growing emphasis on the function of stewarding local resources in water preservation and management.
Bay Delta Protection Plan
One of these modern initiatives is called the Bay Delta Protection plan, and its core emphasis is set on enriching water distribution and supply as well as biodiversity. The BDCP intends to decouple its water distribution system from Delta freshwater flows, restoring thousands of hectares of wetland, restoring river flows to more natural patterns, and addressing concerns impacting fish population health. The governor of the state, Jerry Brown, made a proposition regarding the construction of tunnels to activate water distribution and move the assets to the southern side of the state. If authorized, the BDCP would be executed over the following 50 years, with tunnel construction beginning in the next decade.
Delta Plan
The Delta Plan is another similar initiative. The Delta Plan is a comprehensive management strategy for the ecosystem that aims to assist the state in achieving the constitutive goals of water dependability and revegetation. The Delta Plan is under the supervision of The Delta Stewardship Council. The plan’s final form was authorized in 2013. Long-term goals that meet the needs of Delta stakeholders include maintaining a healthy ecosystem while improving water quality in the state. The main objective is levee preservation and maintenance. When the preceding program is completed, it will be merged with the Delta Plan.
Delta Vision Process
The Delta Vision Process was launched in September 2006 with legislation and a governor’s executive order that developed on the CALFED project (a collaborative state-federal effort). The Delta Vision strategy incorporated the Delta’s entire network and soil use resources. It also established a management strategy for the Delta as a sustainable ecosystem that supports its economic and environmental capabilities. According to the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta proposals, the Delta Vision Implementation Committee released a set of vital actions in December 2008 ( 2020). The peripheral canal included in the list, while intended to protect the integrity of water exports, is controversial due to concerns about its size, magnitude, expense, and carbon footprint.
Delta Risk Management
The Delta Risk Management Strategy considers the Delta’s sustainability and assesses significant risks such as flooding, leakage, slope failure, seismic activity, sea level rise, and climate change. DRMS also considers the consequences and recommends mitigating and reducing the risk. Overall, the Delta Risk Management Strategy aims to identify flood control benefits and beneficiaries within the Delta while targeting a diverse range of stakeholders. DRMS also assists in planning levee advancements and offers specialists to address specific questions that influence policy. As a result, policy and science will be integrated into the visioning process.
Sound Science
Science is one of the most important aspects to consider when conducting ecosystem research. The term sound science is used to differentiate legitimate science from “junk” science, which is material presented as scientific fact but does not adhere to the rigors of legitimate science’s approaches and practice. The scientific method is an organized process of understanding how the natural world operates (Wright & Boorse, 2016). Science investigates what is happening in the natural surroundings and feasible steps that may be taken to affect positive change. Delta’s scientific debate incorporates a variety of concerns and seeks a logical, evidence-based explanation. Among the issues addressed are the adequate amount of water to circulate within the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta and the impact of rapid changes on its aquatic inhabitants. For instance, whether it is feasible to reverse changes to the food web caused by invasive species emergence and what can be done to help struggling fish populations recover.
Monitored tests on slow reverse subsidence are being conducted by scientists searching for answers. According to multiple examinations on different Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta islands, microbial deterioration of natural soils is influencing the land to vanish. Recurring experiments on Twitchell Island in the western Delta aim to determine the variables influencing the frequency and timing of carbon-dioxide output. Shallow flooding intended to reverse subsidence via biomass production and shallow flooding blended with thin-layer mineralization is a potential long-term management strategy for multiple Delta islands (Kraus-Polk & Milligan, 2019). Agricultural use of sectors with shallow peat and low nutrient availability is being considered under the assumption that the total additional subsidence will not disturb the levees. They were, furthermore, melding mineral soil with peat soil to reduce carbon dioxide emissions while allowing agricultural use to continue. Deep flooding to obtain freshwater reservoirs is another strategy on the table.
Limitations
This section reveals the limitations related to scientific initiatives in the context of the Delta. In 2010, the Central Valley Regional Board proposed a project to the Sacramento Regional County Sanitation District (SRCSD) to modernize its procedure, with an estimated cost of $2 billion (Pitzer, 2020). Patricia Gilbert’s research with the University of Maryland on the impact of wastewater discharges on the efficiency of the food chain facilitated the Central Valley Regional Board’s policy. This study was carried out in addition to several research findings undertaken by local scientists, but Gilbert’s work yielded perhaps the most significant results. According to Gilbert, pelagic fish species remediation should focus on reducing nitrogen loads and reestablishing adequate nutrient proportion delivered by point source releases (Pitzer, 2020). However, given that water companies partially sponsored Gilbert’s study, the scientific research behind the plan was being questioned. Authorities within the Central Valley Regional Board emphasized the findings were sound; district representatives stated that the economic risks were too high to pursue with a certain degree of uncertainty.
Scientific uncertainty can arise from errors in measuring devices or comprehension, as well as from accurate but imprecise metrics. There is no guaranteed certainty that the framework is correct because there is always a limit to what can be measured and identified. The possibility that another explanation fits the data better than the one derived is always present (Wright & Boorse, 2016). As a result, scientific uncertainty, as in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta’s particular instance, burdens scientific research and policy execution.
The Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, once the most prominent estuarine system on the Pacific Coast of the United States, has been adapted as a highly efficient agriculture facility, which operation represents California’s water crisis. However, this vital economic and environmental link between California and the rest of the world has been altered to the point where it can barely support necessary ecological functions. Environment-steward programs are being under development and implementation in the region of Delta. Moreover, scientific incentives produce sound findings crucial for ecosystem investigation but are exposed to certain limitations.
References
Bennett, N. J., Whitty, T. S., Finkbeiner, E., Pittman, J., Bassett, H., Gelcich, S., & Allison, E. H. (2018). Environmental stewardship: A conceptual review and analytical framework. Environmental Management, 61(4), 597–614.
Center for Watershed Sciences. (n.d.). The Delta problem. UC DAVIS. Web.
Kraus-Polk, A., & Milligan, B. (2019). Affective ecologies, adaptive management and restoration efforts in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. Journal of Environmental Planning and Management, 62(9), 1475–1500.
Pitzer, G. (2020). Is ecosystem change in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta outpacing the ability of science to keep up? Water Education Foundation.
Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta proposals. (2020). Water Education Foundation.
Wright, R., & Boorse, D. (2016). Environmental science: Toward a sustainable future (Masteringenvironmentalsciences) 13th ed.). Pearson.