Dueling water bonds a recipe for keeping flawed status quo

Inability to find compromise on issues means problems will fester.
12/07/07

California's "water community" -- the term often used to describe the agencies, environmental groups, agribusinesses and other industries with an interest in the state's water -- is one of the silliest misnomers in common parlance.

A community, like a functional family, shares certain attributes: It communicates. It recognizes shared interests. It doesn't put the needs of an individual over that of the group.

California's water community is anything but. At its worst, it is an assemblage of medieval hill towns, heavily fortified and prone toward lobbing fire balls at each other. For several months, the governor's office and Senate President Pro Tem Don Perata have been trying to intercept those bombs. They are failing. California's water wars now appear to be heading to the ballot. Again.

On Wednesday, the California Chamber of Commerce filed four initiatives that could lead to a November bond measure of $10 billion or more for dams and other projects. If the Chamber ends up qualifying one of these initiatives, Perata and his environmental allies are prepared to file a countermeasure. In all likelihood, voters will reject both, partly because the state's fiscal crisis is likely to deepen by November. That's the worst possible outcome, because it would preserve the status quo. And the status quo is a serious crisis.

We've seen such a ballot war before. Back in 1982, a divided water community fought over Proposition 9, which would have built a peripheral canal, various reservoirs and other projects to the tune of more than $3 billion. ($5.6 billion in today's dollars.) It was a classic Christmas tree, with many of the projects thrown in to buy off opposition. Voters rejected it, and the acrimonious fight led to the go-it-alone approach of recent years.

The results have been mixed. Over the past 25 years, urban water agencies have financed their own water projects and invested in conservation. That's a big reason California's population has been able to grow without major state investments in water storage.

At the same time, irrigators and urban water districts have become increasingly reliant on supplies from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. That estuary is now on the brink of collapse. To protect fish, a federal judge has now called for cutbacks in water pumping from the Delta. Another judge has called for flows to be restored to the San Joaquin River.

Because of those twin decisions, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger faces enormous pressure from farm interests and members of his own party. So do Democrats in the Legislature. Neither has been able to move toward a compromise that includes new dams, groundwater storage and conservation efforts.

For their part, the state major environmental groups also haven't shown much chutzpah. Few have stepped forward to acknowledge the obvious: That pumping drinking water from an increasingly saline Delta is both unhealthy and unsustainable. An engineering fix is in order.

The dynamics are different. So are the people in power. Yet unless more reasonable positions prevail, the state is set to repeat the mistakes of 1982.