Peripheral Canal Back on the Delta Policy Agenda?
A new report from the Public Policy Institute of California re-emphasizes the point (made in previous PPIC reports, as well as reports from the Delta Vision Blue Ribbon Task Force) that the systems that currently hold the Delta ecosystem together are “unstable and headed for major change.” The report makes several recommendations to improve the Delta, including building a peripheral canal, a proposal that is sure to be controversial, given the 63-37% defeat of a ballot measure in June 1982 that proposed a similar solution. (PPIC has an interactive map that displays county voting patterns on Proposition 9, showing the significant disparity between voting patterns in most of the counties of southern California, together with Kern County, and the rest of the state.)