Levees need major surgery, but for now bandages will do

You may have thought that by voting for $4.9-billion in flood control bonds last November, you were protecting Southern California’s water flow from the north.

The Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta would be repaired and shielded against a Katrina-like catastrophe. And fresh water would flow south forever down the California Aqueduct.

Wrong. For the delta, the bonds will buy only some tape and putty. The plumbing is old and broken and really needs to be completely redesigned, according to a report released Wednesday by a San Francisco-based think tank, the Public Policy Institute of California.

“Business as usual is unsustainable for current stakeholders,” reads the 300-page report. “Stakeholders” include the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, San Joaquin Valley farmers and environmentalists.

They’re all fighting a losing battle against the natural sinking of delta islands that already are below sea level, global warming expected to generate more extreme droughts and flooding, and the inevitable big quake that would crumble century-old earthen levees.

Right here is a good place for a brief refresher course on the delta: It’s a big mixing bowl between Sacramento, Stockton and the San Francisco Bay that supplies drinking water for 24 million people and irrigation for 3 million acres. It’s where the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers -- and some of their tributaries -- meet before flowing into the bay and out the Golden Gate.

For boaters and anglers, the 1,000 miles of navigable waterways create a Huck Finn paradise. Migrating waterfowl use it as a winter resort. And it’s the main spawning route for chinook salmon that hang off California’s coast.

But to keep relying on delta levees to protect California’s principal water supply is “imprudent and unworkable,” the report warns. “Over the next 50 years, there is a two-thirds chance of a catastrophic levee failure in the delta ... causing major interruptions in water supplies for Southern California, the San Joaquin Valley and the Bay Area ... costing the state’s economy as much as $40 billion.”

But didn’t we hear all this last year when Propositions 1-E and 84 were being sold to voters?

Prop. 1-E, pushed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Democratic legislators, was a $4.1-billion flood bond that included $3 billion for Central Valley and delta levees.

Prop. 84, a ballot initiative sponsored mostly by environmentalists, was a $5.4-billion bond that allotted $800 million to flood control.

OK, it was a hard sale that over-promised. That levee money wasn’t the total answer. But it was the only answer being offered. And if any suggestion in this PPIC report is ever adopted -- and avoids being isolated on a shelf with all the other delta studies -- it will take many years to implement.

Meanwhile, the state can continue on a crash program of plugging levees.

The PPIC report was prepared by academicians, under the direction of economist Ellen Hanak, who specializes in natural resources and agriculture.

“If we do nothing,” she told me, “Southern California is looking toward some really serious economic disruptions, losing a big part of its water supply. And as taxpayers, they ought to worry about the catastrophic failure of the delta because they’d have to foot a large part of the bill.”

The report offers bold ideas by resurrecting some long-discarded ones and discarding other long-held notions.

Nine alternative solutions are offered. But four of them shouldn’t even be considered, it says. They mostly involve trying to keep delta water fresh. Abandon that idea, the authors advise. It’s a 70-year-old approach that “appears near or past the end of its useful life.”

Moreover, some islands should carry a “do not resuscitate” sign if they flood.

The report’s authors suggest allowing the delta to revert to its old brackish self -- fluctuating between salty and fresh depending upon the season and runoff. This would greatly enhance the native critters, particularly salmon and steelhead, and even the declining striped bass that were imported a century ago from the Chesapeake Bay.

The delta no longer would be the main holding tank for Southern California. Rather, its water would be siphoned from the Sacramento River upstream. This would require construction of a so-called peripheral canal, the very thought of which sends shivers up politicians’ weak spines.

The canal would funnel water around the delta directly to the southbound aqueduct. Environmentalists have vehemently opposed such a notion, believing it would lead to more water exports. California voters rejected the idea in 1982.

But the report envisions a canal only half the size of the original concept and operated with environmental protections. There also presumably would be less pumping of water into the aqueduct from the southern delta, which has ground up zillions of young salmon and stripers.

An eco-oriented canal always has made sense to me. But I’d want environmentalists to be allowed a hand on the water valve.

One suggested alternative is downright dangerous, destructive and dastardly, from a boater’s view. It calls for an “armored-island aqueduct” instead of a peripheral canal.

The armored aqueduct would be gouged through the most scenic region of the delta: “African Queen”-reminiscent backwaters near Walnut Grove just off the Sacramento River, skirting state park property called the Meadows. Streams would be widened and levees armored with boulders where cottonwoods and willows now hang and boaters overnight on weekends.

Forget it. Rip the page out and shred it.

Not to be outdone, Schwarzenegger appointed his own blue-ribbon commission Wednesday to recommend a delta fix-up by the end of the year.

Meanwhile, he should keep making those levee repairs we voted for. Right now, applying tape and putty is the only real plan the state has.

George Skelton writes Monday and Thursday. Reach him at george.skelton@latimes.com.