Bradley Calls for Conservation Effort to End Bitter North-South Water War

Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley, trying to end a bitter regional water rivalry, proposed on Thursday that Southern California begin major water conservation and storage efforts aimed at persuading the suspicious north to free more of its water for the south.

“The time has come for Northern and Southern California to stop butting heads, to stop battling, to stop warring over water,” Bradley told a City Hall news conference.

Announcement of the plan marks a major political initiative for Democrat Bradley in his expected race against Republican Gov. George Deukmejian next year. It is a bid to seize statewide leadership on the water issue in a way that will gain him support in the water-hungry south, while making him a favorite in the north, which has repeatedly and successfully opposed efforts to expand water exports through enlargement of the California Water Project.

In the project, water flows from the Feather, Sacramento, San Joaquin and smaller Northern California rivers into the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, where it is pumped south through the Central Valley along a huge aqueduct.

Under the Bradley plan, the Southland’s many water agencies would have to agree to save water and to have facilities to store water shipped from the north during wet periods. That would give them more protection in drought years and, according to Bradley, reduce the need for northern water. Given that southern effort, Bradley said, the north might agree to eventually send surplus water south.

Stresses Surplus Water

“Southern California has no desire to take the water needed in Northern California,” Bradley said. “We are talking about using surplus water. I think this is going to allay many of those (northern) fears.”

In preparing the plan, Bradley and two of his aides, Deputy Mayor Tom Houston and Mark Fabiano, sought the advice of Northern California foes of expansion of the Water Project--and two of them quickly praised the mayor’s proposal.

“I think this is the first time we have seen such a proposal from Southern California and it goes a long way toward addressing the concerns we have,” said Contra Costa County Supervisor Sunne Wright McPeak, a Democrat who heads Northern California’s Committee for Water Policy Consensus. McPeak did not support Bradley in the 1982 Democratic gubernatorial primary but backed him against Deukmejian in the fall of that year.

“It poses a real challenge to the governor, who has been trying to hide from the water issue for over a year,” said Thomas Graff of the Environmental Defense Fund, a conservationist organization that opposes expansion of the Water Project. Graff is a Bradley supporter.

Deukmejian’s director of water resources, David Kennedy, said the Administration is already doing much of what Bradley proposed, including increasing storage and promoting conservation. “It’s always good to have support,” he said of Bradley, in a somewhat ironic fashion.

Bradley proposed storage and conservation measures that he said would give Southern California between 1 million and 1.3 million acre-feet a year without taking more water from the north. An acre-foot is the amount of water needed to cover an acre a foot deep.

The mayor also called for limited expansion of the state’s ability to ship water south. But he said that the much more controversial idea of extensive Water Project expansion, particularly in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, should wait until there were extensive discussions between Northern and Southern representatives. One proposed expansion, construction of the Peripheral Canal, designed to increase delta storage capacity, was soundly rejected by voters in 1982. A Deukmejian delta storage plan was defeated in the Legislature last year.

Bradley’s plan calls for:

- Development of underground water storage areas around Southern California--and possibly a surface reservoir in Los Banos in Northern California. The underground facilities would be natural reservoirs. Myron Holburt, assistant general manager of the Metropolitan Water District, which supplies water to much of the Southland, said the MWD is already doing such storage in three areas. Bradley said it could be expanded.

- Installation of four more big pumps at the California Water Project’s Clifton Court Forebay on the fringe of the delta near Stockton. This would bring to 11 the number of pumps used to pump water south. Some dredging of the delta would be needed.

Environmental Report

State water chief Kennedy said the Deukmejian Administration is already moving ahead with the environmental impact report needed for installation of the new pumps. He said the Administration also supports the Los Banos reservoir.

- Setting water rates to encourage reduced use in the summer to spur conservation, and encouragement of local water agencies to install more underground storage. The Los Angeles City Council has already adopted such a rate plan.

- Construction by big water agencies, such as the MWD, of water conservation facilities in rural water districts, which now have surpluses. In return, the rural districts would sell unused water to the urban areas. The MWD is now trying to work out such a plan with the Imperial Irrigation District.

- A program of “banking,” or storing, unneeded Colorado River Water in Lake Mead during wet years, to be used by Southern California in dry years. The Metropolitan district gets much of its water from the Colorado.

Lake Mead Full

MWD official Holburt has long advocated such a scheme, but said it cannot be accomplished immediately because a series of wet years along the Colorado have filled Lake Mead, the principal Colorado storage facility, located behind Hoover Dam.

- Use of aggressive conservation education programs, along with encouragement of use of water-saving devices in homes and businesses.

- More use of reclaimed water.

- More of an effort to stop contamination of underground water, a serious problem in the San Fernando and San Gabriel valleys. Local programs would be needed, Bradley said, as well as efforts to combat delta pollution.