The War That Never Was

[jester]

But the Delta and these islands are also subject to flooding are they not Or, a drought An island can easily become a prison. Forces move up river and manipulate the flow of water and these bastions are toast.

[Webstral]

The ship channel to Sacramento may be too shallow. Stockton, maybe, as they do have a deep-water ship channel to Stockton.

I agree the draft of a CVN may prohibit movement of such an asset to Sacramento. I havent looked up the figures yet. I was thinking along the lines of a sub running on the surface, to be honest.

But the Delta and these islands are also subject to flooding are they not Or, a drought An island can easily become a prison. Forces move up river and manipulate the flow of water and these bastions are toast.

The issues raised here are important and merit attention.

The Sacramento River Delta islands are, in fact, subject to flooding"or they would be if they were not protected by levees. I dont know the history of levee construction in the Delta, but by the 1980s levees keeping the Sacramento River from interfering with farming on the islands in the Delta amounted to hundreds of miles of levees around the perimeter of these islands. Its a fascinating display of private civil engineering. I would not have imagined that the effort involved would have been worthwhile, but the farmers who got the job done apparently thought otherwise. Pumping of groundwater over the years led to considerable areas of the Delta islands having a lower level than the river during much of the year. I attended an event in the Delta this summer, and I drove roads paved on the tops of many of these levees. Dry land below the level of the river makes an odd sight. The area protected by levees is so great that there is concern that a major earthquake resulting in a breach of these levees would cause the Sacramento River to run backwards from the San Francisco Bay [as a whole] as the river flooded the islands. This would cause brackish water from the estuary to enter the Delta and contaminate the fresh water supplies being pumped out of the Delta. This gives some idea of the acreage under the till behind these levees. Such an earthquake has not happened yet.

Drought is a real problem in California. As I write, water shortages are prompting California agriculture to adapt. However, the problem of drought seems most easily mitigated when one is adjacent to a major river. While no one is going to break a levee to let in water, creating a vacuum inside a pipe will enable the farmers to move water from the river over the levees and into the basin behind the levees. While this does not solve all of the engineering problems of distributing the water across the island, its ready availability in quantity at very manageable distances from the perimeter of each island would make the islands more drought resistant than almost any other location in California.

Security concerns should not be taken lightly. Its the cornerstone of the Twilight: 2000 reality, after getting enough to eat. That much said, I think the locals are going to have to look more at the likely threats than the worst case scenarios. In the case of the Sacramento River Delta, intensive use of the farmland and diversion of energy in the form of ammonia to agriculture on the islands does not mean that all of Milgovs forces in the area relocate to the islands, blow the bridges connecting them to the mainland, sink their boats, and hunker down behind the levees. The Delta would play a part in the overall security scheme for a much larger area. The area in question includes the Sacramento area, the East San Francisco Bay, and the area between them. In a larger sense, the Sixth US Army security zone encompasses the entire SF Bay Area, Sacramento, and the central portion of the Central Valley. While Sixth US Army does not have firm control of every part of its AO (how could it), significant hostile forces within that zone would have a tough time operating at any distance from their own secure bases. Its one thing for marauder bands or a local warlord to control one or a few neighborhoods in Oakland, where penetration of the urban landscape by other armed bodies would be difficult. Its another for forces hostile to Milgov to leave their defensible area, travel to another part of the Bay Area (much less outside the Bay Area), and undertake some major action without drawing a significant response from Milgov.

Manipulating the flow of water through the Delta would require very significant effort on someones part. A number of dammed rivers feed into the tributaries of the Sacramento River. The dams are spread along the eastern rim of the entire Central Valley. Control of a given dam would allow an interested party to cut off the water or release it. However, it should be remembered that there are many tributaries of the Sacramento River. Stopping the flow of water from a given dam would cut off a measurable portion of the water entering the Delta but not meaningful portion from the standpoint of denying the Delta water for agriculture. By the same token, blowing the dam would release the reservoir and increase the volume of water entering the Delta significantly. However, the floodwater would dissipate itself during its movement downstream. The Delta is some distance from the dams that manage the flow of water into the Delta. Thousands of miles of irrigation ditches along the route of the floodwater would reduce its volume and impetus considerably. There would be a noticeable rise in the water level in the Delta once the leading edge of the flood arrived, but the levees were designed to deal with this sort of thing under the premise that large storms in the Central Valley below the dams would result in surges in the water level.

Blowing several dams simultaneously would create a much bigger problem, to be sure. The question becomes, who would do this The most likely culprits would be the Mexican Army. Of the various parties who might be interested in damaging Milgov in its northern California cantonment, the Mexican Army has the best mix of means, motive, and opportunity. However, getting teams with the right equipment and the right knowledge to a single dam inside the [nominal] US occupation zone in mid-1998 or later would be a challenge. Getting several teams to several dams would be a very great challenge. Even without hydroelectric capability due to EMP, the dams are still very important strategic assets. Opening or closing the sluices would be a task of major importance for agriculture in the Central Valley. At least through the Mexican invasion in mid-1998, these dams probably would have security of some sort. After the invasion, the need for security would become even more pronounced due to the threat of Mexican infiltration and sabotage. Whether and for how long government forces can continue to provide security at any given dam is an interesting question.

Getting back to the idea that hostile forces would move upriver to interfere with the flow of water, I think the idea would have merit under very different circumstances. Under the conditions that prevail in California north of Bakersfield after the Exchange, its hard to imagine who would execute such a scheme on a scale to be of genuine concern to Milgov.

[RN7]

The question becomes, who would do this The most likely culprits would be the Mexican Army. Of the various parties who might be interested in damaging Milgov in its northern California cantonment, the Mexican Army has the best mix of means, motive, and opportunity.

Getting back to the idea that hostile forces would move upriver to interfere with the flow of water, I think the idea would have merit under very different circumstances. Under the conditions that prevail in California north of Bakersfield after the Exchange, it's hard to imagine who would execute such a scheme on a scale to be of genuine concern to Milgov.

Orrin Ladd's California Dreaming write up about California in T2K mentions some Soviet forces with the Mexican Army occupying Southern California.

The KGB operates as advisors to the Mexican Army. Although serving only as technical advisors and intelligence gatherers, the KGB provides clandestine assistance to the FMRP faction in the region.

The GRU also operates as advisors to the Mexican Army. They prefer to keep out of the squabbles between the various Mexican factions. Although they work alongside the KGB, like the GRU and KGB around the world, they have their share of mutually hostile encounters.

Spetznaz Group 509: Originally a group of Russian and Eastern Bloc mercenaries working throughout Latin America. Most came from an elite background and most often worked as bodyguards or as cadre for various military and para-military forces. They too found themselves stranded when the war with the Americans broke out and offered their services to the Mexican Government.