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 Suisun Marsh is the largest contiguous brackish water wetland in western North America, providing food and habitat for thousands of migratory birds and many species of plants, fish and wildlife. The combination of tidal wetlands, diked seasonal wetlands, sloughs and upland grassland comprises more than 10 percent of the remaining wetlands in California.

The marsh is where fresh water from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta meets salt water from San Francisco Bay.

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.