A California State Assembly committee last week declined to entertain a controversial bill set to build a canal around the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta and shelved it until next year.

Senator Joe Simitian, D-Palo Alto, has worked on gaining approval from various parties for Senate Bill 27 for two years. Ultimately, farmers, environmentalists and Delta locals opposed the proposed legislation and may have convinced the assembly committee to reject the bill as is.

Often viewed as a new permutation of the 1980 “Peripheral Canal” bill, which proposed the construction of a Delta water-transfer facility and was viewed by many as threat to the local environment, SB 27 has been controversial from its inception.

Environmentalists have decried the building of a “conveyance” system around the delta because of its potential to harm the endangered delta smelt, a fish that was legally protected from huge water pumping by a California federal judge last August.

Simitian plans to rework the bill and introduce a new one next year after learning the findings of the Delta Vision Blue Ribbon Task Force, which has been appointed by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger to “identify a strategy for managing the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta as a sustainable ecosystem that would continue to support environmental and economic functions that are critical to the people of California.”

Photo: Delta Vision