Split Over the Delta: This pact falls short on protecting nature

By Steve Evans

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Legislative supporters and some environmental groups hail the controversial package of delta water policy bills and budget- busting $11 billion bond as "ambitious water reform" and a "huge winner for the environment." Other environmental groups and those who opposed the complex water policy legislation challenge the reforms as being too weak to be effective and say that the bills are rife with environmental loopholes and pork-barrel funding.

Supporters claimed that the package passed earlier this month wasn't about building the costly and destructive peripheral canal, a controversial facility originally rejected by voters in 1982. Apparently, someone forgot to tell that to Gov. Schwarzenegger. The day after the package passed, he vowed "to build a canal around the delta."

Friends of the River, the Sacramento-based statewide river conservation organization, believes that approval and construction of a large canal will all but dry up the delta by diverting freshwater flows from the Sacramento River around the estuary for export south to Central Valley agribusiness and Southern California urban developers. We're concerned about the health of the estuary, and delta farmers and communities are concerned that they will lose fresh water that supports a farm economy worth $2 billion annually.

The package establishes the Delta Stewardship Council with a mandate to develop an overall "delta plan." But the council will not be accountable to voters, and it will consider conveyance options for the delta ("conveyance" is the new political euphemism for the peripheral canal). Since the majority of the council is appointed by Schwarzenegger, it seems likely the council will support the canal.

Loopholes and vague language in the policy package substantially watered down its few good provisions. Although the package promises to reduce reliance on the delta to meet California's future water supplies, it fails to explicitly require reducing current delta water diversions, which have degraded the estuary's ecosystem and pushed its fisheries to the brink of extinction.

The package directs the State Water Board to determine how much water should remain in the delta in order to restore and maintain its ecological health and meet water quality standards. Unfortunately, it doesn't necessarily require actual adoption of standards that would put limits on delta water exports. Whether the board will have the backbone to recommend and adopt effective delta flow standards remains to be seen.

Another positive-sounding but incomplete provision in the package proposes to reduce per capita urban and residential consumption of water by 20 percent. Conservation efforts by agriculture, which consumes 80 percent of the developed water in the state, will remain largely voluntary.

Perhaps the greatest failure of the policy legislation is in regard to groundwater, the largest single source of water consumed in the state. California is one of the few states that does not regulate groundwater, which has led to groundwater overdrafts in many regions. The original legislative package took a timid step toward regulation by requiring groundwater monitoring. But in the final bill, monitoring is largely voluntary.

The most disturbing outcome was passage of the $11 billion water bond, which will likely be placed on the November 2010 ballot for voter approval. Although the bond provides needed funding for regional water conservation, water recycling, reclamation of polluted groundwater and ecosystem restoration programs, it also provides billions of dollars to build new dams and expand existing dams that directly threaten many California rivers. With the water bond, the Legislature is relieving water districts of the financial responsibility for conserving and developing water supplies and foisting it off to the taxpayers.