That wasn’t so hard, was it?

The State Water Resources Control Board has weighed in with its (narrowly confined to water flow-only factors) assessment of what ails the Delta.

Tidily summed up by Kronick, Moskovitz, Tiedemann & Girard, all that needs to happen is for Californians to allow

75% of unimpaired Delta outflow from January through June
75% of unimpaired Sacramento River inflow from November through June
60% of unimpaired San Joaquin River inflow from February through June

Wow. That was really easy. Let’s make it happen, California! All you have to do is use a lot less water! Start by stop growing, developing real estate, and farming in unsustainable, toxic regions!

Of course, the problem is that the state’s citizens want to have their cake and eat it too. They want water, but they don’t want to pay for it. They want schools, but they don’t want to pay for them. They want to be environmental stewards, like their grandparents are, but they don’t, or should we say won’t, pay for that either.

When push comes to shove, the Delta will be the next endangered species to go extinct. The SWRCB report and this map just makes the point that it’s only a matter of time:

According to KMT&G, the report was produced as a consequence of last fall’s assembly votes, the centerpiece of which, the Water Bond, has now fallen through even the Governor’s big hands.

The Governor wanted his cake and eat it, too. Sorry, Governor—no new taxes, no legacy water projects.

All that is left now are bits and pieces from those heady days. Fragments like this SWRCB report, which will be a nuisance to those wishing to export more, not less, water, from the Delta.

But there were other things agreed to last fall. There was the creation of a Delta Watermaster, kind of an ombudsman of water coursing through the Delta. This position has evaporated with the Water Bond.

A majority agreed that, when it came to sharing responsibility for ensuring water supply and ecosystem health, the idea of “co-equality” meant something.

Also agreed to last fall was all sorts spending that, depending on your view and where you lived, was either wasteful pork or necessary investment. What happens to those projects now?

With its report, the SWRCB has done a useful thing, which is to describe the scale of the problem California faces with its water situation. Unfortunately, that problem is so big and so politically intractable that describing it only reinforces just what a doubtful future faces the Delta. Californians have some difficult choices to make.