Water use must change whether fish live or die

Cynthia Koehler in the San Francisco Chronicle: Why should anyone care if California salmon, or local fishermen, go the way of the dodo? Can't we just buy fish from Alaska? And what's wrong with the farmed stuff, anyway? Because of economic suffering in the Central Valley, some are calling for an end to environmental protections for California's once-mighty salmon runs.

At the center of the salmon debate is the fate of the Bay-Delta Estuary, the West Coast's largest and most important estuary. Estuaries are the interconnection between land, rivers and ocean, providing spawning and nursery habitat for commercial and recreational fisheries as well as birds, waterfowl and wildlife. Losing that diversity, turning rivers into canals that no longer support life, risks turning our estuary into a degraded system with more invasive and pest species while local fish, birds, invertebrates and wildlife die off.

…As salmon begin to go extinct, it sets off a chain reaction in the natural community and a chain reaction for people impacted by loss of revenue from salmon and sport fishing, farming and tourism in the bay delta. It also has major implications for the costs and quality of California's water supply.

As we ignore these warning signs and call for more water and less fish, we miss an important opportunity to prepare for a smarter water future. We have water in California, but an ancient system of rights and distribution leads to some farmers paying higher prices for limited supplies, while others receive full allocations at relatively low rates. Some urban areas use 100 gallons per person per day, while others use more than 300…

San Francisco Bay in 1993, shot by NASA