[What is a Rivercat?]

We were driving through the Delta yesterday and the whole time I was thinking that it is such a magnificent area it's a shame it hasn't been developed to its potential. Seems to me it could be like California's own Riviera. I'm admittedly unfamiliar with Delta politics but is there a reason there aren't more hotels and resorts there?

[Mr. Ozo]

[QUOTE= I'm admittedly unfamiliar with Delta politics [/QUOTE]

I'm from the Delta, when I have more time I will explain more. The Delta is all poltics. Many powerful competing forces. There are people who want to literally destroy the Delta and turn into a salt marsh. Again, I will write more later tonight.

ps. Also, there are some hotels, check out the Ryde Hotel, really cool Art Deco building.

[wburg]

Rivercat: What would you consider "developing it to its potential"? The Delta is still a floodplain aside from the portions that are leveed off; those are super rich agricultural areas, a vanishing resource, using them as farms and orchards is already using them to their best potential. Building big resorts wouldn't be very practical because the Delta still floods pretty regularly, but there are plenty of things for visitors to do out there, and some places to stay...but what did you have in mind?

[What is a Rivercat?]

Rivercat: What would you consider "developing it to its potential"? The Delta is still a floodplain aside from the portions that are leveed off; those are super rich agricultural areas, a vanishing resource, using them as farms and orchards is already using them to their best potential. Building big resorts wouldn't be very practical because the Delta still floods pretty regularly, but there are plenty of things for visitors to do out there, and some places to stay...but what did you have in mind?

I don't know exactly. As a native socal guy, I knew nothing of the delta before I moved here. And it turns out it's a pretty amazing place. With much of it in Sac County it seems to me it would make a great eco-tourism destination. Some nice LEED-rated hotels, maybe, that offer delta excursions. I dunno - just feels like a place that has untapped potential.

[wburg]

The Delta gets quite a bit of tourism, not really eco-tourism but it's an excellent "staycation" for people in the Sacramento or San Francisco MSAs--a nice day trip. The big Delta event was the Crawdad Festival in Isleton, it drew as many as 200,000 people for a big weekend of mudbugs and mayhem but was recently cancelled because the city of Isleton is kind of broke. There are some hotels, mostly in historic buildings--and the greenest building is one that is already built!

[SLO]

I don't know exactly. As a native socal guy, I knew nothing of the delta before I moved here. And it turns out it's a pretty amazing place. With much of it in Sac County it seems to me it would make a great eco-tourism destination. Some nice LEED-rated hotels, maybe, that offer delta excursions. I dunno - just feels like a place that has untapped potential.

That could be a good little industry, nothing too big, but it could be a great destination for urbanites.

[Mr. Ozo]

That could be a good little industry, nothing too big, but it could be a great destination for urbanites.



uh guys, tourism is already a pretty big deal in the Delta. However, rather than turning into a joke disneyland like Napa Valley, it retains it flavor as actual working farm towns, especially Walnut Grove, Clarksburg and Cortland. Iselton is more of a retirement community. Thus, tourism isn't really promoted, but tons and tons of people come there to visit. It's really hard to get anything built out there but small projects happen and there has been a lot of rehabbing of historical buildings the last 10 years. People don't realize you can be in Clarksburg in 20 minutes from Downtown, closer than Roseville, Davis or Elk Grove.

[travis bickle]

Part of the attraction of the Delta region is that it still seems like a different world. It's quiet, peaceful and unspoiled. Driving down there on a summer evening as the breeze starts up and visiting any of the delta towns mentioned is one of the true joys of living in Sacramento.

[tronblue]

They could put in some better bike lanes

[slaiguy]

Probably one of the most major reasons that the Delta will never be developed is because it is a huge floodplain with interior of all the islands in the delta sitting below sea level. Not to mention the fact that the levees protecting the Delta would probably fail in a major earthquake and could break if enough flow were to go through there due to a huge storm. Also, to build there you have to go so many feet above what the floodplain is and again, since most of the areas sits below sea level (which is way below the floodplain) you are talking of building structures that are 10, 15, 20, etc feet above the ground.

[Mr. Ozo]

Stealth Legislation Unveiled: A Road Map to the Peripheral Canal
by Dan Bacher
Tuesday Aug 4th, 2009 5:25 PM
The stealth package of water bills proceeding through the California Legislature comprise a virtual road map to the peripheral canal, according to Bill Jennings of the California Sportfishing Protection Alliance.
Stealth Legislation Unveiled: A Road Map to the Peripheral Canal



The stealth package of water bills proceeding through the California Legislature comprise a virtual road map to the peripheral canal - an obscenely expensive and environmentally destructive project that Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, Dianne Feinstein and California Legislators have been relentlessly campaigning for over the past two years.

A broad coalition of recreational fishing groups, commercial fishing organizations, Delta farmers, American Indian Tribes and principled environmentalists is strongly opposing the canal, a bad idea that was voted down overwhelmingly by California voters in 1982.

The five bills that were gutted and passed out of Policy Committees have now been reformatted and released, according to breaking news from Bill Jennings, executive director of the California Sportfishing Protection Alliance (CSPA).

"They will be headed to a joint conference committee and then moved to the floor of the respective houses for a vote," said Jennings. CSPA has quickly reviewed the reformatted bills and issued the following initial reaction. An in-depth review will follow in the next day or so.

"As expected, the five bills comprise a road map to a peripheral canal," noted Jennings. "In a stunning abdication of legislative responsibility and due diligence, the package authorizes the creation of a Delta Stewardship Council comprised of four members appointed by the Governor, two from the legislature and the Chairperson of the Delta Protection Commission."

The Council would have authority to implement a peripheral canal and assess fees and issue bonds to pay for it. "In other words, our legislature proposes to allow the Governor, who strenuously advocates building a peripheral canal, the authority to appoint a majority of members to a Council that has authority to build and fund it," explained.

The five bills are: AB 39, the Delta Plan (Huffman), AB 49, Water Conservation (Feuer), SB 12, Delta Governance (Simitian), SB 229, Water Use Reporting (Pavley) and SB 458, Delta Conservancy (Wolk).

"Collectively, the bills are a legislative shell game that raises bureaucratic mumbo jumbo to an art form," stated Jennings. "While there are some good things to like (i.e., no new dams, conservation, and beneficiary pays principle), the total package is a bureaucratic nightmare and a Valhalla for attorneys."

"It pays lip service to fish and Delta restoration, turns the water code upside down, places a financial and water burden on the most senior upstream water rights holders and will double or triple water rates for those least able to pay - in order to subsidize the guarantee of water to the most junior water rights holders that grow subsidized crops on drainage impaired lands on the Westside of the San Joaquin Valley; lands that when irrigated leach toxic wastes back to the San Joaquin River and Delta," he emphasized.

Jennings compares the poorly-conceived, fast-tracked peripheral canal legislation to the energy deregulation fiasco that was pushed by Legislators and corporate-funded "environmental" groups under the Pete Wilson administration, resulting in power black outs and dramatic power rate hikes through unscrupulous gaming of the market by energy companies including Exxon and Reliant Energy.

The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), through its chief energy spokesperson Ralph Cavanagh, played a key role in drafting, passing and then defending the energy deregulation bill that passed through the Legislature in 1996, according to "Unnatural Disaster: Deregulated California Utilities are Electrocuting the Public," by Harvey Wasserman, 1/25/01 (http://www.ratical.org/ratville/dereg/#UD).

"In sum, the package reminds us of the time the Legislature panicked and rushed into energy deregulation without thoughtfully considering the consequences," Jennings concluded. "But, energy deregulation only cost us $43 billion. This package may end up costing us that much and kill the Delta, northern California fisheries and Delta farming along the way."

A water bond including a peripheral canal would cost anywhere from $10-40 billion today and much more over the thirty years trying to pay it back, according to Steve Evans, conservation director of Friends of the River. However, the cost to the commercial and recreational fishing industries and Delta farmers impacted by the building of "Arnold's Big Ditch" would be billions and billions of dollars more. And the cost of driving endangered species including Central Valley Chinook salmon, Delta smelt, longfin smelt, green sturgeon and the southern resident population of killer whales over the edge of extinction would be incalculable.

The peripheral canal would be approximately the size and length of the Panama Canal. The canal would have the capacity to transport 15,000 cubic feet of water per second (cfs) from the Sacramento River around the Delta. A conveyance to transport 15,000 cfs. would be between 500 and 700 feet wide, requiring a 1300-foot right-of-way, based on an engineering report completed in August 2006 by Washington Group International for the State Water Contractors. That’s the width of a 100-lane freeway!

The length of the conveyance would be between 47 and 48 miles. By comparison, the Panama Canal is between 500 and 1000 feet wide and is 50 miles long.

The current plan for "improved conveyance" under the Delta Vision and Bay Delta Conservation Plan (BDCP) processes is for "dual conveyance," consisting of a through Delta route teamed up with the peripheral canal. Two routes for the peripheral canal are proposed - a western route and an eastern route.

The Department of Water Resources will begin drilling in river bottoms at 16 locations for proposed canal intakes on the Sacramento, Mokelumne and San Joaquin Rivers starting this month. This drilling follows land-based surveys by DWR being done under the BDCP.

Canal opponents from throughout northern California will be holding a “million boat float” from Antioch to Sacramento on August 16 and 17 to save the California Delta and stop the construction of the peripheral canal. For more information, go to: http://www.millionboatfloat.org/index.htm.

For the latest updates on the Delta stealth legislation package, go to the California Sportfishing Protection Alliance (CSPA) website at http://www.calsport.org.

[Mr. Ozo]

If Wolk's SB 458 passes, you won't be able to build a tool shed in the Delta, let alone a hotel. We in Delta are quite opposed to this bill: it eliminates all local control and basically makes any new development impossible.

There is a lot of garbage going around saying that the Delta is unsubstainable, which is nonsense, the government has been starving the levees of funding for years. With say 20 million a year in secure funding, the levees could be maintained just fine, as opposed to spending 20 Billion on a canal. Then there's the red herring earth quake argument. Taking it at face value, why wouldn't a canal be any less susceptible to said earthquake. Now, instead of some broken Delta levees you have a 500 foot wide canal pouring into downtown Stockton.

Another buzz word you hear is the levees are "outdated." Over half of Holland is below sea level and most of it's levees are hundreds of years old. The way to build a levee hasn't changed, it's dirt and rocks, but they have to be maintained. If we can't get the funding to maintain the levees now, who on earth thinks that they are going to maintain the canal properly?

[SLO]

A little maintenance would go along way. These levees arent pounded by tropical storms and hurricanes every year the way Louisiana is. The entire west side of Stockton is built on Delta islands and surrounded by levees.

[Web]

If Wolk's SB 458 passes, you won't be able to build a tool shed in the Delta, let alone a hotel. We in Delta are quite opposed to this bill: it eliminates all local control and basically makes any new development impossible.

There is a lot of garbage going around saying that the Delta is unsubstainable, which is nonsense, the government has been starving the levees of funding for years. With say 20 million a year in secure funding, the levees could be maintained just fine, as opposed to spending 20 Billion on a canal. Then there's the red herring earth quake argument. Taking it at face value, why wouldn't a canal be any less susceptible to said earthquake. Now, instead of some broken Delta levees you have a 500 foot wide canal pouring into downtown Stockton.

Another buzz word you hear is the levees are "outdated." Over half of Holland is below sea level and most of it's levees are hundreds of years old. The way to build a levee hasn't changed, it's dirt and rocks, but they have to be maintained. If we can't get the funding to maintain the levees now, who on earth thinks that they are going to maintain the canal properly?

I will take an old Dutch levee anyday over Most of the local levees which were built on the cheap and not against seepage.....they just piled earth on the ground!!! They need to build footings etc for them and then reinforce them with slurry which the american river area has been......

when water seeps under the levee its countdown to disaster!:hell: