The Delta Initiative is a multi-year research and planning effort at the University of California – Berkeley, dealing with the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta region of California. The fate of the Delta is crucial to California’s future – it is the hub of the state’s water supply system, is an irreplaceable habitat for migrating birds and fish, and is the route through which critical infrastructure powers the Bay Areas’s dynamic economy. The Delta is also home to more than half a million people and a large agriculture industry, and is facing dramatic urbanizsation pressure from the Bay Area, Central Valley and Sacramento housing markets.

The Delta is also at extraordinary risk of disaster. Much of the land in the region has subsided below sea level, and is protected only by an aging system of levees. River floods, earthquakes, and climate change all pose grave threats to the levees, the land, and the state’s freshwater supply. A mass failure of the levee system (similar to that which struck New Orleans) could have immense consequences for the economy of the entire state, and even the nation.

The Delta Initiative seeks to understand these pressures and risks, and to explore alternative futures for the Delta that would improve public safety, secure water supply and infrastructure systems, reduce state taxpayer liability, and provide habitat, open space and recreation benefits.

For more information:

http://landscape.ced.berkeley.edu/~delta/