Can environmentalists restore Californias river of agriculture without destroying its farmers?
At the turn-of-the-century, a spawning Chinook salmon could swim from the ocean to the western slopes of the Sierra Nevada without much trouble. In the 350-mile course of the San Joaquin River, the fish would wind its way through a nexus of small islands and salt marshes of the San Joaquin Delta before finding open waters leading, to the foot of the mountains and the rushing streams above. Today, the journey for that same fish is an impossibility. To reach its native spawning grounds, it must navigate a gauntlet of dams and reservoirs, pass by 11 power plants and circumvent 500 miles of canals. In two sections of the river that account for approximately 60 miles between Fresno and the San Joaquin River Delta, there is no water at all. The demise of the San Joaquin River and its salmon is rooted in an ambitious plan known as the Central Valley Project. Begun in the 1930s, the federally funded project includes a series of dams, reservoirs and canals designed to rescue California’s farmer
