By: North County Times wire services
North County Times
July 16, 2007

Lester Snow said the governor will call for construction of canals and levees in the Sacramento River delta to protect the water supply for 25 million people from the San Francisco Bay Area to the Mexican border.

"His events will highlight exactly why we need storage to capture winter runoff, conveyance to protect the Delta, and conservation to ensure we use water wisely," Snow said as he filled in for the governor during Schwarzenegger's weekly radio address.

In a bitter election two decades ago, northern California residents overwhelmingly turned out to reject a proposed peripheral canal that would have taken fresh water from the Sacramento area around the delta to its southern end. Some of it would have been released into the southern delta for fish, but the rest pumped south to Los Angeles, San Diego and the Inland Empire.

"We must fix the Delta conveyence system and change the way we deliver water to protect our environment and our economy," Snow said.

The governor is also expected to call for state and federal funds to be used to improve existing levees that prevent salt water from Suisun and San Francisco bays from flooding the freshwater delta, and contaminating the pumps that push delta water on its way 500 miles south to San Diego.

Those levees protect delta cities like Stockton and Sacramento suburbs from flooding, but some are more than a hundred years old and in danger of collapse, state officials have warned.