Boating closures on Delta lifted

The last boating closures in the Delta were lifted this week, with flows into the estuary tapering off after six months of relentlessly high water.

At the peak of the flood in late February, almost all of the southern Delta was declared off limits to boats. Officials worried that the wake thrown by the boats could damage levees that were already straining to hold back the force of hundreds of thousands of gallons of water passing by every second.

They also worried that the boaters could run into debris in the water, or disturb levee repair efforts.

One hundred and thirty days later, with most of the Sierra snow having melted and the San Joaquin River expected to drop another couple of feet by early next week, it’s time to fully reopen the Delta to boaters, said Michael Cockrell, head of the San Joaquin County Office of Emergency Services.

“The feeling was that if you have a boat go by that causes a wake, the water is below where the majority of the erosion is” on the levees, he said. “On the public safety side, we know there’s a lot of debris out there still floating around, but it’s getting harder and harder to justify keeping the restrictions in place.”

Next week, Cockrell’s department will ask county supervisors to keep a local flooding emergency declaration in place, at least for another month, as cleanup work continues. Some county parks along the Mokelumne and the San Joaquin rivers are still closed and the rivers are still much higher than they were at this time of year during the drought.

But overall, upstream reservoirs are releasing less water and the outlook is good, Cockrell said.

About $12.5 million in damage has been reported in San Joaquin County from the major storms and associated flooding, along with nearly $13 million in agricultural losses. Eight levees were breached, most of them in rural areas along the Mokelumne River.

None of the major Delta islands have flooded, however.

The boating restrictions raised concerns in the community of Discovery Bay, where the closures earlier this spring had the potential to cut off thousands of boaters from the rest of the Delta. Cockrell’s agency responded at the time by allowing boat traffic in some areas only around low tide and at speeds of less than 5 mph.

Boaters appreciated the gesture.

“That all worked out fine,” said Frank Morgan, captain of a charter boat based in Discovery Bay. “Everyone seemed to be able to live with it knowing the severity of the problem. We knew we had to make some concessions.”

Not anymore. The restrictions are gone and the Delta is once again open for business.