Nine years ago, talks began among farmers, water managers and environmental advocates about how to salvage four key salmon river-highways and the Delta without completely drying up the nation’s most productive farmland, or leaving cities like Los Angeles or San Jose with too little water for human needs. The consensus among biologists and hydrologists was that the Tuolumne, Stanislaus and Merced rivers — the three key veins that feed the San Joaquin River on its trip north to the Delta — could survive and sustain migrating salmon if diversions to fields and homes were sufficiently curbed to leave the rivers 60% of their natural flow.

Source: Los Angeles Times December 11, 2018 11:09 UTC