Urban Water Agencies Back Plan to Aid Bay : Environment: The agreement removes obstacles to devising protection for the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta.

California’s urban water agencies provided a significant breakthrough in the long battle over the fragile Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta on Thursday by agreeing to environmental protections for a brackish bay that serves as a nursery for endangered species.

Appearing at a State Water Resources Control Board workshop, the state’s 11 largest water agencies announced they have reached an accord with environmentalists over the control of salt levels in the Suisun Bay, a rich estuary that nurtures a wide variety of plants and fish.

The California Urban Water Agencies, a coalition that includes the giant Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, said it now supports the establishment of a salinity standard for the bay even though it will mean that less water--particularly in dry periods--can be shipped south to cities and farms.

Urban officials estimated that they would have to give up about 160,000 acre-feet of fresh water in

normal years and 300,000 acre-feet in dry years to comply with the standards. (An acre-foot is roughly enough water to supply the needs for two Southern California families for a year.) The urban users said they were better off with the present agreement than under rigid water-allocation formulas that were being proposed a year ago.

Both sides said the agreement over a salinity standard removes what has been a serious stumbling block in the long and tortuous effort to devise protections for the environmentally threatened delta. Farming interests, meanwhile, did not immediately take a position on the proposal, although some agricultural water agencies told the board they were willing to consider it.

“It’s a significant movement by the urban agencies to recognize the need for better protection for the estuary,” said John Krautkraemer, an attorney for the Environmental Defense Fund. “It’s evidence to me that they really are serious about trying to find a way to improve protections for the bay delta estuary.”

The MWD’s general manager, John R. Wodruska, said many issues of sharing scarce supplies remain to be resolved. But he said urban agencies were motivated to reach the latest agreement with the environmentalists by provisions of the Endangered Species Act--a federal law that has been used repeatedly to curtail pumping from the delta, along with water deliveries to Southern California.

“You could spend hundreds of millions of dollars to fix something and then the next month somebody would come and say, ‘Oops, we’ve found another species here,’ and then you would get shut down,” Wodruska said.

With the establishment of standards, he said, there would be less need to invoke the act and water agencies could have more predictable guidelines to follow in their management of diversions from the delta.

Although the ultimate decision on delta standards rests with the state, members of the control board have made it clear that they want the warring factions--urban, environmental and agricultural interests--to reach agreements that can provide guidance for a final plan.

The delta, a vast maze of manmade islands and channels fed by the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers, is an essential water source for people as well as nature. Not only does it provide most of the state’s drinking water and farm irrigation supplies, it also is the habitat for nearly 400 fish and plant species, including some that are endangered.

Water pumped from the delta and sent south via aqueducts in most years supplies about half the total distribtued by the MWD.

In the last decade, the increased demands for water by a growing population have prompted more and more pumping from the delta, which in turn has increased salt levels and degraded delicate estuaries. In 1987, the state determined that the delta needed stronger environmental protections but each time the control board proposed new standards, there was outcry from one or more of the rival interests.