Greed Can Kill Water Deal

When it comes to water in California, north fights with south, farmers battle cities and environmental groups try to fend off both. A solution to this unending, growth- fueled battle exists, but a combination of greed and penny-pinching keeps threatening to destroy it.

The sprawling Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, coupled with its ultimate outlet, San Francisco Bay, is the heart of California’s agricultural and domestic water supply. Just as dependent on the quality and amount of water flowing through the system are the delta’s fish and other fauna. In 2000, state and federal agencies ratified a long-discussed agreement creating the joint Bay-Delta Program to protect the environment and stabilize water supplies. (The federal government has always had a role in California’s water wars as the operator of the giant Central Valley Project.)

The state-federal project, nicknamed Cal-Fed and expected to cost up to $13 billion over decades, went into effect in 2003 with the appointment of a governing authority, including representatives of six state and six federal agencies dealing with water development, levee protection (remember the huge levee section that failed last month?) and fish and wildlife management.

The federal end of things threatened to crumble almost immediately, when Congress declined to reauthorize participation in the effort. The state carried on some of the programs with hundreds of millions of dollars from bond issues and general revenues, but it was a pittance of what’s needed.

There’s now a spark of hope. The House passed a Bay-Delta bill last week that authorizes $389 million in federal spending over the next five years. A companion measure in the Senate, sponsored by California Democratic Sens. Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer, is broadly similar to the House bill but closer to the spirit of the original 2000 deal. The House version unfortunately tosses a gift to farmers that would allow giant reservoirs and other water projects to proceed unless Congress specifically passed legislation to stop them. The Senate bill requires authorization before the concrete is poured, as has been the rule for a century. For the protection of the delta, that’s the way it should stay.

There’s also a problem in Sacramento. A basic tenet of the Bay-Delta Program has been that beneficiaries of projects, such as reservoirs serving farm areas, pay for them, while tax money pays for environmental improvements. User fees for Cal-Fed projects were included in Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s proposed budget but removed at the insistence of farm groups and Republican lawmakers.

There seems no end to the greed for water in California, but there is definitely an end to the water. The Cal-Fed deal was fair all around. Those trying to get more for themselves will only destroy it.