Original Research ArticleA case study in integrated management: Sacramento-San Joaquin Rivers and Delta of California, USA

Over the past 150 years dams have been constructed and water diverted from the Sacramento and San Joaquin Rivers to provide water for the San Francisco Bay area, the Central Valley and Southern California. Together with land reclamation and sedimentation from hydraulic mining practices during the gold rush, this has led to major changes in the delta environment. In 1994 the Federal and State Governments established the CALFED program, which had as its objectives: (1) to attempt to ensure the reliability of water supplies; (2) to improve the water quality of the Delta; (3) to attempt to restore the Delta ecosystem; and (4) to improve levee protection. More recently CALFED has been superseded by the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta Reform Act to manage all activities in the Delta in support of the “two co-equal goals” of water supply reliability and ecosystem restoration, with the Bay-Delta Conservation Plan (BDCP) drafted with the intent to guide both the operation of water infrastructure and the ecosystem restoration activities. The act also created a new administrative agency, the Delta Stewardship Council with the mandate to develop a comprehensive management plan for the Delta, the Delta Plan (DSC, 2013). There remains a challenge to balance fiercely competing interests and develop a science-based adaptive management approach which can produce an outcome that all stakeholders can live with.