flowerbug
Sustainability Master
anyone who knows the CA water system would understand that mentions of water "being flushed" out to the delta are talking points of ignorant or purposely deceptive people.
the delta near San Fran has rivers coming in from the north and the south and is a bay on the ocean. which means if any of the rivers are not flowing enough there is a risk of mixing fresh water and salt water.
since the delta is also acting as a fresh water transfer system from north to south if you mix too much salt water in there that means all the water will be too full of salt to be used for irrigation. did you ever see what salt does to farm land? oh yes, that water is also used for drinking water in the south too so it has to be clean enough for that too. too much salt in drinking water also does have some health consequences. there are times when they are pumping so much water to ship water south that the rivers that normally flow south to north are instead flowing south. this plays havoc with salmon and other fish migrations (to the tune of most of the salmon now not surviving and they're having to transport the young salmon so they have a chance of surviving).
of course they could replumb the delta to bypass the bay which would avoid such problems but then the issue becomes one of them having less fresh water in the delta which would change that ecosystem entirely. costing billions of $ too. they're trying to do this project anyways, but most people with some sense in their heads know that such a change just invites further ecological damage because once you start pumping water around then it costs too much to not use such infrastructure and people will complain that if you don't use it that you've wasted $. dammed if you do and dammed if you don't (puns intended).
