There are no malls in Rio Vista.

There are no movie theaters either. What Rio Vista has to offer is water—lots and lots of water. “Our economy is heavily dependent on the rivers and the delta,” says Al Medvitz, a resident of Rio Vista. Rio Vista, nicknamed the Gateway to the Delta, is a small community of about eight thousand people that lies on the banks of the Sacramento River. The Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta provides recreation and a living for many residents of Rio Vista. However, many fear that the big agribusinesses of Southern California and politicians in Sacramento will ultimately decide the fate of the delta and their community.

The Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta is unique in that about eleven hundred miles of levees protect fifty-seven “islands” in the delta. Though not true islands, they are referred to as islands because they are completely surrounded by water. Many of the islands range from ten to twenty-five feet below sea level, and are in danger of flooding if the structural integrity of the levees in the delta were to be compromised. The levees also keep the fresh water from the Sacramento and San Joaquin Rivers from mingling with the salt water from the San Francisco Bay, and it is this issue that is most vital for politicians and farmers.

The delta provides much of the drinking water for California and fuels California’s $31 billion agriculture business, so the health of the delta and the levees are a big concern for the state. With California’s current state of drought and climate change, and the fragile levee system, many politicians and scientists are scrambling for a solution to the quandary that is the delta. One controversial solution that has been proposed by a group of University of California, Davis professors with the Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC) is to build a peripheral canal that would move water around the delta, instead of through it.

However, this solution only secures the freshwater supply and doesn’t address the issue of flooding in nearby cities. And the notion of a peripheral canal is worrisome to those who live along and around the delta.

Council Member Jan Vick of Rio Vista is concerned that certain questions in studies about the peripheral canal aren’t being answered. “How would a peripheral canal affect the salinity of the delta?” says Vick. “We feel that adequate studies haven’t been made on that issue.” As an agricultural community made up of family farms, many of the farmers rely on the direct availability of freshwater from the delta. Vick says that residents of Rio Vista are concerned that the siphoning off of freshwater and the influx of salt water would make the water along the delta far too saline to be used in agriculture, and would have an adverse impact on the ecosystem.

Medvitz and his wife Jeanne McCormack have lived and worked in Rio Vista for nearly 20 years. Medvitz gave up a teaching position at Boston University and moved to Rio Vista to farm on his wife’s family farm. They get the water they need for their farming from the delta with the assistance of diesel pumps that pump water upstream and into their wells, but he realizes that a peripheral canal will affect how he does his farming. “All of the water from the mountains flows through the delta and pushes out the saltwater,” says Medvitz. “A canal that pumps the water down to Southern California will make the water far too saline. You can’t farm with that.”

The farming fields in Rio Vista are irrigated and watered by the delta. The water is siphoned from the delta directly and flows freely to water the crops on the property. It’s hard to imagine the web of waterways in the delta becoming useless, but it is possible.

Keith Coolidge, deputy director of communications at CALFED Bay-Delta Program, says that the peripheral canal is only one option that the state is considering. “You have a current system you can’t abandon by building a peripheral canal,” says Coolidge. “It would take nearly ten years to build a canal. What are you going to do for the next ten years?”

However, that is one of the recommendations in the report by the PPIC. According to the researchers, the best course of action would be to move away from the levee system, and be willing to sacrifice some of the fifty-seven islands that dot the delta.

Jay Lund, one of the contributing researchers on the PPIC report and professor of environmental engineering at UC Davis, says that the levee system is very shaky, and that the notion of these earthen structures protecting California’s water supply is “scary.” The levees, which are mostly composed of soil, are at considerable risk during an earthquake. “An earthquake the size of the one in 1906 in San Francisco would bring down many of the levees at the same time,” says Lund. “The water in the delta would then become salty for a really long time; nearly ten years.”

“The solution has to be found at a local level,” says Medvitz. “Los Angeles needs to invest in desalination and conservation.”

It may be a long time before anything changes in the delta. A peripheral canal was proposed in 1982, but was soundly defeated by Northern California voters who felt that Southern Californians were attempting to steal their water. It is an issue that deals not only with economics and safety, but with environmental issues and the ecosystem. However, time is something that the delta- and all of California- can not afford. The study by the PPIC indicated that in fifty years, most of the islands will be permanently flooded, and the current levee system would be far too expensive to maintain. In January of 1997, heavy rain battered the delta, and with a number of key levees failing, a hundred thousand people were evacuated and millions of dollars in property was lost.

Mark Twain once said “Whiskey is for drinking; water is for fighting over.” When the fight for water in the delta is over, there will be plenty of drinking on both sides.