Welcome to The Delta Dispatch, a podcast series connecting you to The Delta Plan - California's comprehensive, long-term strategy to achieve both a reliable water supply and a healthy, resilient Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. The Delta Plan includes Performance Measures – carefully selected and data-driven metrics that measure and track progress towards these coequal goals.
These measures can be as complex as the Delta itself. On each episode of The Delta Dispatch, we aim to demystify them! Through conversations with experts, we delve into some of the most impactful performance measures, elucidating not only why they are important, but also examining their impact and meaning from multiple perspectives.
Have you ever seen bright green patches of algae floating in the water? You might be seeing a bloom of algae... and it might be harmful to you and your pets!
In this episode, we explore Harmful Algal Blooms (HABs) in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta with Guests Tricia Lee (Delta Stewardship Council, Delta Science Program) and Spencer Fern (Restore the Delta). We delve into what HABs are, examine their causes and impacts on human health, and discuss the performance measure aimed at monitoring and mitigating their effects.
Guest Information & Headshots
Tricia Lee, Senior Environmental Scientist, Delta Stewardship Council Delta Science Program
Tricia Lee is a senior environmental scientist at the Delta Stewardship Council, where she works to increase collaborative science on priority emergent water quality topics such as harmful algal blooms and contaminants of emerging concern. Prior to joining the Council as staff in 2021, she completed a Sea Grant State Fellowship with the Council in 2017 and later worked in a variety of roles to optimize sustainable aquatic resource management. Tricia has a MS in Marine Biology from San Francisco State University at the Romberg Tiburon Center. When she's not working, Tricia enjoys paddleboarding, cooking from her garden, and spending time with her husband and pets.
Spencer Fern, Delta Science Program Manager, Restore the Delta
Spencer Fern was born and raised in Stockton, California, and grew up recreating on the Delta. He currently works on monitoring for the harmful algal blooms in the Delta. Spencer attended college at CSU Monterey Bay, where he studied biology and received his Bachelor of Science in Microbiology in 2019. He returned to Stockton that same year and was hired by Restore the Delta in 2021. He took the job because it aligned with his desire to work in the science field while also being connected to the Delta he grew up recreating in. In working on HABs issues, he’s been involved with water agencies ranging from the State Water Board, Metropolitan Water District, San Francisco Baykeeper, Delta Stewardship Council, and more.
Did you know that some areas of the Sacramento San-Joaquin Delta are literally below sea level? Land that used to match the level of the rivers and tides has vanished before our very eyes, and some people now live, work, and farm on land 20-30 feet below elevation mark zero.
This phenomenon of land sinking - called subsidence - is the subject of this episode of the Delta Dispatch. Within, we explore subsidence in the Delta with Guests Campbell Ingram of the Delta Conservancy and Steve Deverel of Hydrofocus – from what causes it to what it means for our Delta, and the Delta Plan performance measures aimed at its reversal.
Guest Information & Headshots
Campbell Ingram, Executive Officer, Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta Conservancy
Campbell became the first Executive Officer of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta Conservancy in March of 2011. The Conservancy is tasked with being a lead agency for ecosystem restoration in the Delta and supporting efforts that advance environmental protection and the economic well-being of Delta residents.
Steven Deverel, Principal Hydrologist and President, HydroFocus, Inc.
Steven Deverel has over 40 years of experience in California and throughout the western United States. After completing a doctorate at the University of California at Davis in 1983, Steven worked at the US Geological Survey where he investigated the hydrologic and geochemical processes associated with land subsidence in the Delta. Since 1994, he has worked in the private sector, opened a consulting firm in 1996 and cofounded HydroFocus, Inc. in 1998. Steven has authored numerous publications related to land subsidence and strategies for mitigating subsidence and has also led and participated in investigations into impacts of subsidence on ecosystem processes, agriculture, and infrastructure and implementation of land uses and restoration for mitigating subsidence.
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The Delta Dispatch
The Delta Dispatch podcast was produced to connect audiences to the intricacies of the Delta Plan and its performance measures. Delta Plan performance measures allow the Delta Stewardship Council, Delta Plan implementing agencies, stakeholders and the public to track how well the goals and objectives defined in the Delta Plan are being achieved and to detect environmental or administrative changes due to implementation of policies and recommendations in the Delta Plan.
Relying on science and monitoring data, these measurable indicators are based on numeric targets and include dates to achieve the targets as well as baseline conditions against which to evaluate progress.
Delta Plan performance measures allow the Delta Stewardship Council to integrate science and monitoring results into decision-making, adaptive management, and to track progress towards the coequal goals.
An updated set of performance measures was adopted by the Council in June 2022 as Appendix E of the Delta Plan.
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