The 24-page Layperson’s Guide to the Delta explores the competing uses and demands on California’s Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. Included in the guide are sections on the history of the Delta, its role in the state’s water system, and its many complex issues with sections on water quality, levees, salinity and agricultural drainage, fish and wildlife, and water distribution.

The Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta is California’s most crucial water and ecological resource. It is the largest freshwater tidal estuary of its kind on the west coast of the Americas, providing important habitat for birds on the Pacific Flyway and for fish that live in or pass through the Delta. It also the hub of California’s two largest surface water delivery projects, the State Water Project and the federal Central Valley Project. The Delta provides a portion of the drinking water for 27 million Californians and irrigation water for large portions of the state’s $50 billion agricultural industry.

The endangered Delta smelt is a 3-inch fish found only in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. It is considered especially sensitive because it lives just one year, has a limited diet and exists primarily in brackish waters (a mix of river-fed fresh and salty ocean water that is typically found in coastal estuaries).