Washington Has Chance to Clear Up Water Mess

Beginning with Senate hearings this week, Congress has the opportunity to settle a 17-year-old legal fight among five Indian bands and two North County water agencies over the rights to water that flows across Indian land.

If Congress passes and the President signs legislation carried by Rep. Ron Packard in the House and Sens. Pete Wilson and Alan Cranston in the Senate, it will end a lawsuit filed in 1969 over control of a canal that carries water to Lake Wohlford in Escondido from the San Luis Rey River and a nearby water-well field.

It would be fitting for the federal government to provide the final seal of approval for the complex compromise because it began the problem a century ago when the Interior Department signed away the rights of the Indians to the water that passed through their reservations.

Lengthy negotiations, assisted by Packard’s office, have produced an agreement over how much water would belong to the La Jolla, San Pasqual, Rincon, Pala and Pauma Indian bands and how much would go to the Escondido Mutual Water Co. and the Vista Irrigation District. The settlement also provides for dividing the cost of operating the canal and water-well network.

But the last part of the package must come from the federal government--22,700 acre-feet a year of surplus federal water from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. That water would be transported via the California Aqueduct to the Indians, who in turn would give part of it to the water agencies as partial compensation for operating the facilities.

But at this point, another long-standing water dispute enters the picture, as Central California water interests are unhappy at the thought of water from their region being shipped to Southern California. Despite the fact the federal government caused the problem in the first place, and despite the fact that this would be a minuscule portion of the water the government owns in the delta, they fear setting a precedent of transporting water from the Central Valley Project outside their region.

With both California senators and 36 of the state’s 45 House members backing this legislation, objections from Central California should not be allowed to unravel a very delicately negotiated deal among the other parties. The federal government has an opportunity to clean up a mess it at least helped create, and it should do so without unnecessary delay.