U.S. to Propose Stringent Plan to Revive Bay, Delta : Environment: State water transfers will be affected. Goal is to restore estuary’s fish, wildlife to 1970s levels.

In an unprecedented move to revive the ailing Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta and San Francisco Bay, the Clinton Administration will propose stringent environmental protections today that could have a profound effect on California’s water supply.

To meet the proposed standards, the state would need to restore to the bay-delta estuary an average of 540,000 acre-feet of water per year--a significant portion of the amount used by Southern California cities, Central Valley farmers and some Bay Area residents, according to a draft of a federal statement obtained by The Times.

The goal is to normalize the sprawling estuary’s excessive salt levels and return the populations of spawning fish and wildlife to levels of two decades ago. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency stepped in after California officials were unable to decide how best to protect the bay and delta.

Underscoring fears about the bay-delta’s declining condition, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service will propose today to declare a fish, the Sacramento splittail, as a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act, according to the draft statement. The agency is expected to reject listing of another delta species, the longfin smelt.

Simultaneously, the federal government will unveil long-awaited plans that outline what conditions will be placed on water transfers from the delta next year to protect two fish already listed as threatened--the delta smelt and the winter-run chinook salmon.

Many details of the Clinton Administration package remain a mystery because it won’t be officially released until a news conference this morning in Sacramento.

For 15 years, California officials have struggled with how to reconcile saving one of the state’s most valuable natural resources--the huge estuary that reaches from San Francisco almost to Sacramento--with the need to keep faucets running to the cities and farms to the south.

After the state refused to act, the federal government--facing a lawsuit by 16 environmental groups, and a growing list of species on the verge of extinction--stepped in for the first time to set water quality standards.

The federal move places Gov. Pete Wilson at a critical juncture because he must decide whether to fight the new rules or implement them. If Wilson complies, he faces the politically unpalatable task of choosing how to spread the burden among California’s urban areas and farmers, because the delta is the state’s main source of water.

“There remains the important question of whether the state will get off the dime,” said David Behar, executive director of the Bay Institute, a San Francisco environmental group that sued the EPA to force the federal standards. “The state has done zip to address the ecological decline in the bay-delta.”

State Resources Secretary Douglas Wheeler said in an interview Tuesday that Wilson’s reaction will largely depend on whether the federal agencies are willing to let the state be a major partner in the final decision on what standards to impose. If the state must ultimately implement the new standards, he said, it should play a role in devising them.

Wheeler and Timothy Quinn, State Water Project director at the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, said they could not endorse the federal package as it stands. But they said they believe the Clinton Administration is willing to modify the terms.

“We would expect a recognition that these standards are just drafts . . . and that the announcement would include some acknowledgment of the need for them to be modified,” Wheeler said.

Under a court settlement, the EPA has until March 15 to adopt final water standards for the estuary, although a delay is considered likely. Clinton’s top environmental and water advisers and Wilson’s advisers are working closely to find a solution that is acceptable to both administrations. In an interview with The Times, Assistant Secretary of the Interior Elizabeth Rieke said the Clinton Administration wants to avoid invoking federal laws or triggering lengthy litigation with the state.

Rieke called the bay-delta an incredible resource that must be protected because it is one of the nation’s last remaining large wetlands. But she added that the Clinton Administration wants the least possible disruption of California’s water supply.

She said a 7% cutback is reasonable and can be fairly easily attained by cities and farmers with more water conservation and use of reclaimed water.

The fate of the delta, which is the main source of water for the aqueducts that supply farms and Southern California cities, is one of the state’s most complex and far-reaching environmental and economic dilemmas. It encompasses many significant issues--such as the future of urban growth and agriculture--and a political wrestling match between the Wilson and Clinton administrations.

Soon after taking office, Wilson declared the delta “broken” and directed the state water board to fix it. But last April, Wilson backed off and told the board to abandon its controversial effort. Environmentalists say the governor did not want to jeopardize his strong ties to agriculture, which fears losing water that it now takes from the delta.

At stake is the amount of water that can continue to be drawn from the delta by the state’s gigantic plumbing systems--the largest are the State Water Project and the Central Valley Project. About one-fifth of the water consumed by the 16 million residents of Southern California comes from the State Water Project. The two projects supply water to most of the farms in the San Joaquin Valley.

Interior Department officials say that under the Clinton Administration proposals the state’s urban areas and farms would lose an average of 7% of the water taken from the delta.

The state, however, estimates that the losses would be much greater, as much as 25%. The disparity comes largely from different calculations of how the state would implement the proposed federal standards.

Quinn of the Metropolitan Water District said he believes that the federal authorities have grossly underestimated how much fresh water must be left in the delta to reduce the salinity of the estuary. “The water-supply impacts of this could be substantial,” he said.

The federal proposal is the second major event this week that could guide the future of Southern California’s water supply. On Monday, the city of Los Angeles and environmentalists signed a long-awaited agreement that would give up about one-third of the water obtained from Mono Lake in exchange for $25 million of state money to build a reclaimed water facility.

The bay and delta, a sprawling estuary where Sierra Nevada runoff blends with salty Pacific tides, was once one of the world’s richest aquatic ecosystems. But salmon, bass, smelt and other fish that were abundant in the early 1970s are slipping toward extinction after widespread pumping of the fresh water.

The centerpiece of the multi-pronged federal package is three proposed water quality standards establishing how much salinity would be tolerated in the estuary, especially in Suisun Bay, which serves as the area’s fish nursery.

“This for the first time will give the estuary standards that are truly protective of biological values,” Behar said. “That gives us broad ecosystem protections that have been lacking for 15 years or more. Equally important are the protections of individual species whose populations have crashed.”

To meet the standards, water pumping from the delta would have to be reduced by an average of 540,000 acre-feet of water per year--equivalent to the amount consumed by 1 million Southern California households, according to EPA and Interior Department estimates. During extended droughts, the cutback would swell to 1.1 million acre-feet.

In a draft of her statement to be officially released today, Felicia Marcus, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s regional administrator in San Francisco, emphasized the agency’s willingness to work with the state.

Marcus called the plan “an unprecedented proposal by four federal agencies to work with the state to end the gridlock in water policy in California.”

BACKGROUND

For 15 years, state officials were unable to decide how to keep enough fresh water in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta and San Francisco Bay to protect fish and wildlife. Earlier this year the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said it would step in with a solution. Today, the Clinton Administration will announce several steps to protect the estuary, including rules that could force a significant cutback in water for farms and cities.