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State awash in questions over Delta plans
RYDE September 30, 2009 12:04am 
• Holds last of four workshops on conservation • A peripheral canal? Or a tunnel? It’s a line on a map 
A Delta resident expresses concerns and questions DWR officials.
DWR consultant and officials fielded questions
Some in the audience telegraphed their position
The future of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta and its supplies of fresh water used by 23 million Californians is being shaped in part by town hall-style meetings.
The fourth and final scheduled information session on the vast plan’s conservation features attracted about 150 into the audience at a hotel in Ryde in the heart of the Delta Tuesday evening.
The five-hour hearing was to take in comments about conservation measures.
But concerns expressed by residents included questions about how much water will be diverted from the estuary into canals to farms in the Central Valley and lawns in Los Angeles.
A spokesman for the Department of Water Resources says no decisions would come directly from the information sessions. He likened them to the early innings of a baseball game that would eventually go 18 innings.
Among materials the DWR has distributed is a detailed map of the Delta from north of Sacramento to south of Stockton. On it is drawn a line stretching from Freeport north of Sacramento southward along the east side of the Delta to DWR’s giant water pumps near Tracy that send fresh water into canals that eventually take the water to Los Angeles.
This “conveyance facility,” as it is dubbed might be a giant canal, which some critics have said would be larger than the Panama Canal, or perhaps a tunnel beneath the Delta.
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