Politics and Water

Orange County Supervisor Harriett M. Wieder is to be commended for her leadership in the organization of the Southern California Water Committee during the past year. The committee’s stated goals are to increase public awareness about Southern California water needs and to build a consensus for meeting those needs.

This laudable purpose was not served, however, by her strident and untimely attack on Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley’s recent proposal of a possible solution to Southern California’s short-term water demands. Her charge that Bradley is injecting politics into the California water debate and is “inciting water wars” doesn’t fit with the declared nonpartisan nature of the tax-exempt committee dedicated to solving water problems “in a climate of calm.”

One can argue that it is impossible to discuss water in California without talking politics in some form. So let’s be big girls and boys about this: Of course Bradley wants to be governor. And of course it would seem to help his political effort, particularly in Northern California, to propose a water plan that would appeal to San Francisco Bay Area environmentalists and others. It is no secret that Bradley has won the backing of Tom Graff of the Environmental Defense Fund in Berkeley. And his designated campaign manager, Mary Nichols, is a member of the EDF board.

It is no secret, as well, that Wieder is a Republican and a one-time aide to former Mayor Sam Yorty, whom Bradley defeated for mayor. Her meeting with the press was arranged with the help of the office of Los Angeles County Supervisor Pete Schabarum, another Republican, a committee board member and no friend of Bradley.

Wieder claimed that she was not upset so much by Bradley’s proposals as by his political motive for suddenly entering the water debate. However, Ventura County Supervisor John K. Flynn, a Wieder committee board member (and a Democrat), complained about Bradley’s emphasis on water to be gained through conservation. Conservation is “not going to solve all our problems” and may mislead people about the need to move more Northern California water to the South, he said.

There is, however, a problem with the conservation-will-not-solve-all-our-problems talk. It sounds too much like code language for “We’ve got to have a Peripheral Canal, now .” If the Southern California Water Committee’s only goal is to justify the need for the controversial canal around the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, it will have difficulty building any consensus that will contribute to a resolution of statewide water problems. Further, the committee will find itself isolated and impotent if its leaders continue to incite their own political wars.