Don't wait until it's too late for the San Joaquin River

By Eric Caine

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At almost 350 miles long, the San Joaquin is California's second-largest river. When it's running at full capacity, the San Joaquin delivers more than 7 million acre-feet of water, most of it to farmers (an acre-foot of water is enough to cover one acre to a depth of one foot).

Despite its mighty production, few Californians ever see the San Joaquin in any form other than flooded farm fields or water coming from a tap. These days it's hard to imagine steamboats once did a thriving business up and down the San Joaquin, but they did.

Now the river runs dry for a 60-mile stretch, and in many places it's not much more than a stone's throw across.

For years the San Joaquin has been the object of a bitter lawsuit pitting farmers, developers and environmentalists against one another. The focus of the lawsuit was the historic salmon runs that the river once was famous for, but the real rub was a familiar battle for the power to divvy up the west's most precious natural resource.

This time the fish won out and over $400 million has been allocated to bringing water and salmon back to that 60-mile desert where the San Joaquin disappears into dry ground.

Some of the players in the water game are understandably bitter about the court's decision to allocate water for fish. They argue that people should come first and the dire consequences of less water for people -- lost jobs, lost farm production and perhaps even lost farms -- should outweigh what seems to them an unfair legal decision.

The courts aren't the only target for people's wrath. Rep. Devin Nunes of Visalia, himself a politician, blames politicians. Of course it's usually the politicians from that other party, in this case the Democrats, who are to blame.

Nunes claims "radical greenies" bent on "destroying our economy in the San Joaquin Valley" have taken over the Democratic Party and have engineered a "man-made drought." The Republican congressman isn't too clear about how the "greenies" managed to bring about three consecutive years of less than average rainfall, but perhaps the explanation is forthcoming.

It's easy to forget that water shortages have been a looming threat for decades, and easier still to forget the San Joaquin River and Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta are near a state of collapse because we have ignored their health.

Deferred maintenance always comes with a steep price, especially in the case of rivers and waterways.

Those calling for delays in beginning the task of restoring our waterways have good reasons for their positions, but they have forgotten that these are the same reasons we've always used to postpone the inevitable.

As painful as the fix is now, the consequences of a total collapse would be even worse, and unless we act soon, we're looking at a total collapse. We should have learned by now that the longer we wait, the worse it gets. Action now is painful; action later may be too late -- not just for salmon, but for all who depend on healthy rivers and waterways.

Caine, a Modesto resident, teaches at Merced College. E-mail him at columns@modbee.com.