A fight over the management of a diked island in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta is shining a light on a growing conundrum for California water managers, farmers and environmentalists over the best way to restore natural habitat on cropland created more than a century ago by draining marshes.
The courtroom battle over 9,000-acre Staten Island is the latest conflict in the delta over farming, wetlands and the aging levees that, besides preventing flooding, preserve a way of life on the man-made islands.
The suit, filed in 2018 by a group called the Wetlands Preservation Foundation, accuses the California Department of Water Resources and the Nature Conservancy of failing to adequately protect wildlife or employ sustainable agricultural practices on the property, one of the largest of 57 reclaimed islands and tracts in the delta.
The case was argued in San Joaquin Superior Court last month and a ruling isn’t expected until next month, but the arguments are familiar to those with stakes in California agriculture, drinking water and fisheries.
Staten Island has problems that are quite common for the rest of the delta it has subsidence, said Jay Lund, the director of the Center for Watershed Sciences at UC Davis. I think down at the southern end, it’s 20 to 25 feet below (mean high tide), and there are other places in the delta that are similarly deep.
The island, which the state purchased in 2001, was turned over to the Nature Conservancy in exchange for a conservation easement that required restoration of sandhill crane habitat, sustainable farming and maintenance of the levees.
It is sinking because the heavily farmed peat soils have decomposed as a result of oxidation. The lawsuit claims the Nature Conservancy failed to halt, and even exacerbated, the situation by allowing damaging corn crops to be grown and failing to adequately bolster the levees. It alleges that conservancy officials used $14.5 million in farming profits that were supposed to be spent on conservation and levee maintenance on the island for general operations at their headquarters in Arlington, Va.
The gross mismanagement of Staten Island … poses serious risk that the entire island will be permanently flooded, John Keker, the plaintiff’s lawyer, said in a statement. He is demanding that the two agencies immediately start strengthening and extending levees, replacing lost soil and converting Staten Island to more sustainable farming practices, like rice, alfalfa and other crops that do not ruin the soil.
The case is important because it could influence farming practices and management of other delta islands, many of which are now little more than bowls protected by dirt levees.
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