State Water Board Delays Plan to Protect Delta

State water regulators put off a decision Tuesday on a sharply contested proposal to protect fish and wildlife in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, voting instead to retreat behind closed doors to search for a compromise in private.

The delay appeared to reflect a lack of consensus among the top water officials about the sweeping delta protections, which would require deep reductions in water shipments to farms and cities in Southern and Central California and impose new fees.

About two-thirds of the state’s drinking water passes through the delta en route to a vast network of aqueducts and canals across the state, but biologists say years of pumping and other problems have seriously damaged the estuary’s ecosystem, pushing several types of fish to the brink of extinction.

Last week, the federal government listed the delta smelt as threatened under the Endangered Species Act. The listing, which was expected, could lead to a federal requirement that the state take action to protect the delta environment.

The State Water Resources Control Board had originally indicated it would issue an order by Tuesday imposing environmental regulations on pumping and water diversions, but backed off after listening to two days of sometimes blistering criticism by farmers, urban water agencies and operators of the state’s largest water systems.

Members of the board, who regulate water flow from the delta, said they needed more time to undertake a lengthy point-by-point review of suggested changes to the delta plan, including nearly 100 revisions proposed by their own staff.

“This is probably one of the most complex tasks facing any adjudicatory board anywhere, and the suggestion that it is something that you can just do overnight is a fallacy,” board member John Caffrey said. “We have got to get it right.”

The delay was criticized by some environmentalists who fear that it will be exploited by the proposal’s opponents.

“It just gives more time to forces in favor of the status quo to beat up on the board . . . to prevent a decent decision from emerging out of this,” said Tom Graff of the Environmental Defense Fund.

Caffrey said the board has nothing to hide from the public and that conferring in private would speed up the review process. Board members did not say how long the private sessions would last, although member Marc Del Piero said he hoped a decision would be in hand before April 1, the date when some water pumping restrictions were to begin under the proposal.

The timing of a decision becomes somewhat more complicated next week when the five-member board, which already lost one member to retirement, could lose another member if he is not reappointed by Gov. Pete Wilson. A spokesman for Wilson said a decision on the reappointment of Eliseo Samaniego, whose term expires Tuesday, has not been made.

William Attwater, the board’s chief counsel, said that if new members are named to the panel, action on the delta could be delayed so the newcomers can review the reams of material submitted by the public.

A string of problems have plagued the water board since it began considering new regulations for the delta in 1986. The current regulations for protecting the delta, imposed in 1978, were deemed inadequate by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

Under a plan unveiled in April by Wilson, the board’s regulations are intended as temporary measures to protect the delta while a long-term solution is pursued by a separate committee of experts. Wilson pledged at that time that the temporary protections would be in place by the end of 1992, and federal officials--particularly the Environmental Protection Agency--have been closely monitoring progress.

An EPA official said Tuesday that the agency was not happy with the board’s proposed regulations--particularly revisions suggested this week by the board’s staff--saying that they do not go far enough to protect fish and wildlife.