Water Partnership

A most significant achievement in Congress has demonstrated that Northern and Southern California indeed can work together for the mutually-beneficial development of the state’s water resources.

House and Senate negotiators have agreed on crucial legislation providing for the joint operation of California’s two giant water projects: the federal Central Valley Project and the State Water Project. Final Congressional approval seemed assured. Presidential approval is vitally important to the interests of Ronald Reagan’s home state.

The immediate goal of the measure is to protect the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta and San Francisco Bay against environmental damage created by pumping of the two projects’ water from the delta for transport via canals to farms in the San Joaquin Valley and urban users in Southern California.

The bill thus meets a longstanding demand of Northern California water users and environmentalists. The legislation was sponsored by Rep. George Miller (D-Martinez), who was in the forefront of northern forces that crushed the Peripheral Canal project in the 1982 election.

But all of California benefits from the Coordinated Operating Agreement. The success of Miller’s H.R. 3113 came about only with the assistance of Rep. Tony L. Coelho (D-Merced), who represents valley farmers, and Robert P. Will, Washington lobbyist for the Metropolitan Water District, the wholesaler of water to the urban South.

The legislation will not solve all of California’s water problems. Nor does it constitute the North’s ransom for a Peripheral Canal. But it does lay the foundation for the painstaking cooperation that will be required in coming years to resolve other issues and, ultimately, to permit the South to export more water from the delta. Further, in requiring the federal project to observe state water quality standards, the agreement finally puts the state’s water destiny firmly in California hands.

The reality is there no longer are Northern California water problems and Southern California water problems. Bad water in the delta means bad water flowing out of Southern California taps. North and South not only can cooperate, they must.