The Delta is also a premiere environmental resource, providing habitat for 120 different species of fish--including a migration corridor for several runs of salmon--and a wintering haven for a significant number of birds on the Pacific Flyway.

The Delta is located at the juncture of the state's two largest rivers--the Sacramento and the San Joaquin. More than 42,000 square miles of California terrain drains into the Delta. Roughly forty percent of the state's fresh water flows through the Delta. South of Sacramento and east of San Francisco Bay, the Delta is a maze of channels and sloughs and includes more than 100 islands.

While the Delta is a rich ecosystem, it has primarily been shaped by human needs. Beginning around the the middle of the nineteenth century, farmers began building levees to reclaim land in what was then a vastule marsh. Today, these islands comprise a $500- million agricultural economy.

Water development in the Delta began in this century, with most of the federal Central Valley Project constructed in the 1930s and 1940s, and the State Water Project built in the 1960s and 1970s. These investments in California's future helped usher in an era of unprecedented economic growth and prosperity for the state's residents, and catapulted the state to the forefront of the nation's industrial and agricultural producers.

Over time, the Delta ecosystem has declined.There have been a variety of reasons for this decline--water diversions, introduced species, pollution, overharvest of fish species among them. Two species of fish (the Delta smelt and winter-run Chinook salmon) are currently protected under the federal Endangered Species Act, and protected status is under consideration for the steelhead, Sacramento splittail, and spring-run Chinook salmon. Those protections have resulted in the reduction of water deliveries from the Delta. In addition, many of the 1,000-miles of island levees are vulnerable to collapse, which could jeopardize the quality of the state's drinking water supply.