With Democratic leadership eager to get a water deal done, the legislature appears set to vote tonight on two water bills, with Speaker Bass saying members will “make history today” by approving a package. The “policy” bills, focusing on Delta restoration and conservation, have been technically split from the big water bond, but there remain fundamental political linkages. And as the day wears on, more and more opposition to these bills, and ultimately to the entire process, emerges.

As things stand now, there will be a $10 billion bond to construct “dams, regional water projects, and ecosystem restoration”, $3 billion of which goes to build dams at Temperance Flat and Sites, and to expand Los Vaqueros Dam near Livermore. Unlike every other water project in state history, these would be funded by taxpayers, and not solely by the users of these projects. They would also not be subject to separate legislative approval.

The policy bill includes the creation of a Delta Stewardship Council to help oversee the use of the Delta. A majority of its members would be appointed by the governor, and it would have the authority to approve the construction of a Peripheral Canal, subject to certain environmental thresholds that are currently unclear. As the Contra Costa Times explains, Westlands Water District – which has been driving this process by demanding to be allowed to cut in line ahead of other water users and to be subsidized to do so – is satisfied with the proposed language:

At the heart of the new policy is a framework for a canal to route water around the Delta, a prospect that Delta interests detest because it could curtail housing development, make it more difficult to farm and could harm water quality and fish by diverting a portion of the Sacramento River out of its natural watercourse.

The path to building a peripheral canal would be clearer and more certain, but it would also be more difficult. The bills would strictly require the canal’s vehicle, the Bay Delta Conservation Plan, to ensure its operation actually restores the Delta.

The provision has the support of the state’s largest irrigation district but has split environmental groups.

The Westlands Water District supports the legislation because, despite its strict language, it provides “a clear path” to a new way to move water around the Delta.

“We’re not certain we can meet (the requirements). We hope we can,” said Ed Manning, a lobbyist for the Westlands Water District in the San Joaquin Valley, in testimony last week.

The policy bill also includes some statewide groundwater measuring standards, and mandates 20% conservation of water, statewide, by 2020.

Key environmental groups, labor unions, and other Californians are already taking sides. The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) and California League of Conservation Voters (CLCV) are embracing the deal, with CLCV doesn’t think the deal is perfect but thinks it’s good enough to support at this time. On the other side, the Sierra Club opposes the deal, and Carl Pope denounced the process in a HuffPo op-ed.

Water agencies are similarly split. NorCal water agencies now oppose the deal, though most SoCal agencies, led by the mammoth Metropolitan Water District of Los Angeles, playing key roles in getting the deal done.

Of political significance, Artesia Democrat Tony Mendoza reports CTA is opposed to the water bond, likely to be joined by several other major labor unions who are rightly concerned about crowding out public services spending by adding to general fund debt service levels, with Treasurer Bill Lockyer warning 10% of the general fund could be going to service debt if the water bond is approved.

Not being in Sacramento, you should take my prognostications with a grain of salt (preferably salt from the western San Joaquin Valley, which has too much of it). But I would be surprised if this deal goes through. Unlike the budget, there’s no looming threat of statewide fiscal meltdown. Failing to approve a water deal won’t cause government to shut down, it won’t cut off payments to schools and workers.

There is considerable political pressure to do a deal, but there is growing pressure to not do a deal. CTA’s opposition is significant, and may give Democrats who might be inclined to back the deal some pause, especially those looking to move up to other elected offices in 2010.

Finally, there is the question of the electorate. Any water bond has to go before voters in 2010, likely at the November election. I have a very difficult time seeing voters approving a $10 billion water bond, especially considering that the state’s finances aren’t likely to be in much better shape.

More importantly, the water bond will come with significant environmental and policy costs that other similar bonds haven’t had. For example, I was a strong supporter of the Prop 1A bond last year that authorized $10 billion for high speed rail. But that essentially came with no costs and  no downsides. HSR creates thousands of jobs, generating new tax revenue and saving people money on their travel costs without negative environmental impacts. In fact, high speed trains powered by renewable energy help provide cleaner air and mitigate against global warming.

That doesn’t eliminate the financial questions, but it made HSR a far easier sell than a water bond that could produce major environmental damage. After all, the bonds to build a Peripheral Canal were rejected by voters at the 1982 election, for many of the same reasons as a 2010 bond might go down in flames as well.

Whether a deal gets done tonight or not, the torturous process, once again largely hidden from public view, that produced the deal is yet another sign of how broken our state government has become.

UPDATE by Robert: The Delta governing bill, SBX7 1, passes by a 29-5 vote. No roll call just yet. Sen. Steinberg’s press secretary, Alicia Trost, counters claims on Twitter that this is a deal done in the dark:

Water pkg has had 9 months of public debate, 10 full public hearings.  Cogdill bond bill has been around for 3 yrs.

Note the “X7” in the bill title. This is the seventh special session in the current legislature. Not exactly an argument for a part-time legislature, is it?!

…the Cogdill bond bill, SBX7 2, is currently under debate. Cogdill says we need this for when we have 50 million people in the state. Lois Wolk speaks against this, arguing we can’t add the debt load to the general fund. Ironic to see Republicans calling for profligate spending – IOKIYAR! Or, It’s OK If You Hired Sean Hannity To Whine On Your Behalf (IOKIYHSHTWOYB).

…Wolk says SEIU now opposes bond along with CTA, complains that Delta will have to pay into the mitigation fund – “like asking a crime victim to pay half the restitution. shame on you all.”

…Maldonado speaks in favor, says we’ve been talking about this for 30 years, we need bipartisan solutions, we have to do this even if some people think it’s unpopular, blah blah blah. Will Arnold pick him for Lt. Gov already and get him out of our hair? I can’t stand having this guy represent us. Why exactly should your Central Coast constituents, Abel, have to pay to subsidize Westlands or let SoCal sprawl?

…Maldonado isn’t talking about water, he’s running for Controller and gunning for Central Valley votes. He’s already decided that his Central Coast constituents can be tossed overboard for his own ambitions. And not for the first time.

…love watching GOP Sen. Benoit (Riverside County) almost trip over his contradictory wingnut talking points, justifying the now $9.9 billion water bond because of global warming “even though, uh, some of us, uh, might question that” (referring to global warming).

…Cogdill closes on the finances: “hope and pray” that in 5 years there is economic recovery and the money won’t be an issue. I see that hope and prayer are what pass for Republican financial planning these days.

…$9.9 billion water bond squeaks by 28-8 (needs 2/3rds). Some Dem noes include Mark Leno, Mark DeSaulnier, Lois Wolk, Pat Wiggins. Didn’t catch the full list.

…SBX7 7 up now, the water conservation bill, with some last-minute amendments. It would be great if this bill information was being updated in real-time for us out in the public. As far as I can tell, without having seen the recent amendments, this is a good bill.

…20% conservation by 2020 is totally doable, especially for urban users. No excuse for not doing so, no matter the specific problems with this water deal. Time for CA to stop wasting water. Too bad this is linked to a ridiculous water-wasting and Delta-killing deal.

…water conservation bill passes 25-13. On to the Assembly next. And I’m headed to sleep.

Well, at least for another year. The Sac Bee reports that the Assembly Water, Parks and Wildlife Committee, chaired by Yolo County’s own Lois Wolk (D- Davis), just killed SB 27 until next year. The bill, sponsored by Sen. Joe Simitian (D-Palo Alto) would have established a committee to build a peripheral canal diverting water around the Sacramento Delta for export south, although it called it a “conveyance” in a modest feat of bureaucratic obscurantism.

Wolk, whose 8th Assembly District represents the northern half of the Delta, and who is running for the 5th State Senate district, which encompasses most of the eastern half of the Delta, recently spoke about Delta issues in a three part interview (1, 2, 3) in the Davis Vanguard:

We’ve asked the Delta to do many things and many of them are incompatible with each other. We want it to supply an unending or increasing supply of water to Southern California and to the Bay Area. We want it to be an extraordinary estuary to breed and facilitate fisheries. We want it to be the repository of agricultural and urban runoff. We want it to, I don’t, but it has become an area of increasing urbanization. We’ve asked it to do far too many things and it is dying, it is absolutely dying. Of course it is surrounded by levies that are basically 19th century piles of dirt, and they are failing. And it is seismically at risk. You can’t imagine an area that is of more significance and at risk.

What can we do? We can do a number of things. The people of the state of California voted for a bond in 2006 to repair the levies and to begin the process of improving the water quality in the Delta, and the fisheries, the habitat, and the agriculture. What we can do is to try to raise the profile of the delta. Most people know where the coast is and know why it’s important to protect it. Most people know about the Sierra Nevada, and they will protect it. They know about Yosemite and they will protect it. They know about their local parks and they want to protect those. But the Delta has very few people in it and very little political clout. So we need to be able to raise the profile of the Delta so that it takes its place as the key water and environmental issue for California.

Then we need to put in place structures that will protect it. It needs are steward. There is no steward-no body, no agency-whose sole purpose is to protect the delta. And if I’m elected to the Senate, that’s what I’ll spend many years trying to accomplish. It won’t be easy, but there has to be a body like the Coastal Commission that focuses exclusively on the Delta and has responsibility for all water decisions and all environmental decisions that affect it. That won’t be easy to do, but I am convinced that has to occur.

Of course, the Delta has to be preserved long enough to get such a commission to – ironically – preserve it, so it’s great news to see this bill killed in committee. Gov. Schwarzeneggar and San Joaquin vallley agribusiness were pushing to get this on the November ballot along with a $4 billion bond, as part of that whole extra special emergency session intended to ram through a bunch of dams funded with public bond money. Having this off the ballot may make the High Speed Rail Ballot measure, which also stands to be a boon for the Central Valley (even if the Altamont Pass route that was rejected would have been even better for the Delta commuter cities), more likely to pass, so this is good all around.

The Delta is dying, for a host of reasons, ranging from So Cal and the San Joaquin Valley stealing too much of its water, to a network of static 19th century levees that work at direct cross-purposes with the innately dynamic hydrological structure of a river delta, to cities and farms dumping all manner of pollutants into the water, to sprawl in the floodplain, (and that’s just the beginning), but the way to save the Delta isn’t draining it. The Delta is a stark example of the way that modern society ignores the hidden values of things just because they don’t overtly cost money to use. Until the state learns to see that incredibly complex ecosystem and hydrological system as something more than just a channel where a valuable commodity flows to the sea, and thus wasted, the Delta will continue to be in danger from hare-brained ideas like peripheral canals.

But for this year, it’s safe. And that’s worth remembering in November, when Wolk runs against San Joaquin Republican  Greg Aghazarian to represent the Delta.

(h/t to Aquafornia for the link to the Bee story)

originally at surf putah

It may be hard to remember, but last fall the state had not one but two special sessions. The first, on health care, ended with the rejection of the flawed mandate proposal ABX1 1. The second, on water, appeared to have also ended in acrimony, as Republicans insisted on $3 billion for new dams that Democrats were unwilling to support.

But even though the issue slipped below most of our radar screens, supporters of dams and canals have been hard at work promoting these obsolete 20th century technologies as some sort of “solution” to a 21st century crisis. The Planning and Conservation League reports on the California Chamber of Commerce’s efforts to enlist Arnold and DiFi to promote an $11 billion water bond – with $3 billion for dams:

PCL has recently gotten an Insider scoop that the California Chamber of Commerce is pressuring both U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein and Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger to endorse its environmentally-devastating $11.69 billion water bond initiative.

The bond, which the Chamber hopes to place on the November 2008 ballot, is strongly opposed by environmental groups throughout California for its potential effects on the state’s natural resources. The bond would:

   –Include $3.5 billion explicitly for dam construction, plus billions more that could be used for dams on California rivers.

   –Establish a dangerous new “water commission” empowered to fund and build a peripheral canal and divert massive amounts of water from the Sacramento River around the imperiled California Bay-Delta Estuary for large-scale corporate agriculture in the San Joaquin Valley and sprawl development in Southern California. (Over-pumping of water from the Delta during the past eight years has already contributed to the collapse of the Delta ecosystem, including plummeting salmon and other fish populations.)

   –Eliminate public and legislative oversight and leave the fate of the Delta and Northern California rivers in the hands of politically appointed bureaucrats likely to have strong ties to special interests in the San Joaquin Valley and Southern California.

The Chamber’s push is seen by many as an end-run around the Governor’s own Delta Vision process, which has brought together stakeholders from the environmental, business, water, agricultural, and Delta communities.

That plan, which would eliminate badly needed oversight protections and saddle the state with $760 million a year in bond service costs, is bad enough. But over the weekend the PCL reported at the California Progress Report that bond supporters are now trying to do an end run around  voters, as the state Department of Water Resources is now arguing that it is not bound by the 1982 rejection of the Peripheral Canal by voters:

According to a recent budget change proposal submitted to the state Legislature, DWR intends to start preparing to build a new “Alternative Delta Conveyance” facility, which would divert water directly from the Sacramento River before it enters the Delta, sending it directly to the San Joaquin Valley and Southern California….

Under its proposal, DWR would revive studies and update construction plans that it abandoned in 1982 after voters overwhelmingly rejected its “Peripheral Canal” proposal in a statewide referendum due to fears that such a facility would result in more Northern California water exported to the ever-growing south state, and that the Delta would be left as a saltwater lake rather than a true estuary.

The budget request from DWR follows a recent letter sent to Assemblywoman Wolk (D-Davis) by DWR Director Lester Snow, stating that according to DWR’s analysis, DWR has the authority to build a peripheral canal without legislative or voter approval.

More analysis below…

As the PCL explained, the Peripheral Canal would be a catastrophe for the Delta. The main environmental threat to the Delta is increased salinity due to export of fresh water for farmers and residential users further south. The Peripheral Canal is designed to bypass the delta altogether – finishing off the Delta as a freshwater system. The result would be ruinous for water quality, fishing, and stressed levee systems. It would be sacrificing the Delta once and for all in order to continue allowing California users to overuse what they already have.

It’s worth reminding ourselves why dams and canals are such a bad idea. First, they simply are not necessary. The Planning and Conservation League has weighed in with its own plan that emphasizes conservation programs, watershed restoration, and groundwater retention (in other words, pumping the water back into aquifers to be stored underground, a more environmentally friendly and sustainable solution than dams). If properly funded, they note, several million acre feet of water could be produced through these more sustainable methods. One acre foot typically equals the annual water usage by a family of four. The state’s own water assessment plan shows that conservation can eliminate the “need” for these new dams.

Second, and perhaps more importantly, we face a changing climate that is likely to leave us with less water to go around – making these dams even more unnecessary, a waste of precious money that should go instead toward global warming appropriate solutions. California is a very drought-prone climate. Climate change in California is expected to produce a hotter and drier climate, with a reduced snowpack. Precipitation in the Sierra is expected to fall as rain more often than snow, forcing significant shifts in how water is stored.

But the problem isn’t just that the Sierra will see less snow and more rain, but that it will see less water, period. And the problem isn’t limited to the Sierra – as anyone who’s been to the Southwest recently knows, the whole region is suffering from reduced rainfall. Some experts suggest we may be on the verge of a 90 year drought in the US Southwest, and that Lakes Powell and Mead may never return to their previous levels.

Faced with the prospect of prolonged drought, it seems foolish for California to assume it can solve its problem merely through added storage – why build more storage for less rain?

Senator Feinstein should not agree to this reckless and unnecessary plan, and should instead use her considerable influence to help put a better, less expensive, more sustainable and environmentally sensible water bond on the ballot this November. Water is our most precious commodity, and it should not be left in the hands of far-right zealots who cannot bring themselves to admit the need to abandon the failed ways of the past and instead construct sensible solutions for a new climate.