Water Breakthrough

In the past, the major milestones in the chronology of California water development were grand engineering achievements such as giant dams and endless ribbons of concrete-lined canals. They include Los Angeles’ Owens Valley project, the federal Central Valley Project, the state Water Project, the Metropolitan Water District’s Colorado Aqueduct and, still the greatest symbol of the engineers’ prowess, Hoover Dam. These milestones have made possible the residential and economic growth of urban Southern California and the blossoming of the state’s exceptional agricultural institution.

Now, with President Reagan’s recent signature of a single piece of legislation, California has reached a new milestone that involves no concrete, no spillways, no cofferdams, no tunnels, no aqueducts. It exists on paper only. This is an achievement of politics, not engineering. It is the legislation ratifying a Coordinated Operating Agreement between the state officials who operate the state Water Project and the federal officials who run the Central Valley Project.

On the face of it, the so-called COA does little but give official federal sanction to what has been done during most recent years on an informal basis: It provides for the state and federal water chiefs to operate their projects in conjunction with each other so that the pumping of water from Northern California to the San Joaquin Valley and Southern California is conducted with the least possible environmental damage to the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. Now, the federal project formally must observe state water quality standards in the estuary.

Symbolically, the agreement does much more. Among other things, it recognizes the changing nature of water collection and distribution in California. No longer can the ever-growing thirst of the farming valleys and urban Southern California be fed merely by building more dams and canals. No longer can the South take the water it wants without considering the effect on the North. And no longer can the federal government pump all the water it wants without recognizing state environmental protection laws and regulations.

Rep. George Miller (D-Martinez), the author of the legislation, calls it “an historic peace treaty” between Northern California and Southern California. The agreement, by itself, will not solve all of the considerable water problems that still face the entire state. But it has the potential for being the foundation for future negotiation, accommodation, and resolution of the regional water wars that have divided the state for too many years.

In signing the bill, the President had to reject opposition from his Office of Management and Budget. Presumably, the extraordinary unity of disparate California interests behind the Miller bill persuaded him that there was far more at stake than the minimal federal cost involved.

The dams and canals of the past are impressive, but they were built on a concept of virtually endless water supplies and the frontier ethic of getting your straw into the glass before the other guy does, even if it was his glass. Today begins a new age. Milestone No. 1 is the Coordinated Operating Agreement, which recognizes the reality of limited water supplies and the need for conservation, cooperation and sound management. That is the only ethic that will work now.