Land and Water Policies in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta

Abstract

Rivers can serve as regional bonds (Ullman 1951). This concept is illustrated by the role of the Sacramento -- San Joaquin delta as the node of a vast water-distribution system in California. The delta has a series of aqueducts associated with the federal Central Valley Project, which was authorized in 1933, and the California State Water Project, which was authorized in 1959. They constitute the physical means or imprints on the land by which portions of southern California, the Central Valley, and the San Francisco Bay area are connected to the delta to form a huge functional region (Fig. 1). The water-distribution system serves approximately 18 million people and 2.7 million acres of farmland. Important in the evolution of this region was environmental legislation that progressively laid the policy foundations for use of the land and water resources. Other factors are the characteristics of the physical environment and regional economic and political interests. The analysis of this context centers on an examination of state and federal policies for reclamation of wetlands, land drainage, inland navigation, and mining-debris and flood control prior to 1933 and on an assessment of the regional conflict among northern and southern California, the gold-mining counties of the Sierra Nevada, and the agricultural counties of the Sacramento valley. Wetland Reclamation The first major set of policies directly bearing on the delta related to swamp and flooded-land reclamation, which is hereafter referred to as swampland reclamation. At statehood in 1850 California was granted all of the 2.1 million acres of swamp and flooded lands by the federal government on the condition that receipts from land sales be used to build levees and drains for reclamation (United States 1850). Approximately 500,000 acres of those lands were in the delta, then a virtually unsettled and undeveloped wetland. Segregation of swampland from the federal public domain, ownership, and reclamation were the first policy matters about the delta that the state legislature had to address. Resolving those issues was crucial in transforming the delta into one of the leading agricultural areas of the state. Complicating policy formation was the question of whether a centralized or decentralized authority was responsible. That overarching concern stemmed from philosophical differences about the role of government in the republic. The Jeffersonian viewpoint favored decentralized or local-oriented controls, while the Federalist preferred centralized implementation of policies for the good of the population as a whole. The Democratic Party, which generally adopted the Jeffersonian position, dominated in California during the 1850s, and state policies during that decade reflected the decentralized approach (Kelley 1989, 32-37). In 1855 demarcation of swamplands was delegated to the state surveyor general, who worked with county surveyors (California 1855). However, the state had petitioned Congress for federal surveys. In effect, from the 1850s to the early 1870s state and federal surveys were under way concurrently. The state surveyors, who were often county officials, tended to include lands that were sometimes flooded as swamplands, but federal surveyors left such parcels in the public domain. The contested demarcations were resolved by a state law in 1858 that required the state surveyors to accompany their federal counterparts in the field in the hope that disputes would be settled as they arose. In 1871 the secretary of the interior accepted the state survey lines (Thompson 1957, 189-191). From a spatial standpoint California had sought to maximize the area under its jurisdiction. Settlers and landowners tended to favor a state designation because federal preemption law limited the sale of public domain to 160 acres at a price of $1.25 an acre. In contrast, as many as 320 acres of swampland could be purchased from the state for $1. …