New Water Exports From North Sought by Key Legislator

The chairman of a key legislative committee announced Monday that he will introduce legislation to deepen channels through the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta and increase water shipments to Central Valley farmers and Southern California urban areas.

Assemblyman Jim Costa (D-Fresno), who chairs the Assembly Water, Parks and Wildlife Committee, said that his proposal will emphasize improvement of water quality for 14 million Californians who depend on the State Water Project. But he noted that one result would be to increase water exports from the north by as much as 500,000 acre-feet a year, enough water to take care of the needs of up to 3 million people.

Conservation groups denounced the Costa proposal as a revival of a plan backed by Gov. George Deukmejian in 1984 and said that it could renew a water war between the northern and southern parts of the state.

The earlier plan for expanding delta facilities, dubbed “Duke’s ditch” by detractors, failed to win legislative approval. But Costa said he believes the time may now be right for working out the differences that doomed the last effort.

Governor Is Hesitant

However, Deukmejian--whose water supply ideas have been rejected either by the Legislature or the voters in recent years--is not rushing to embrace the Costa plan, which is backed by a coalition of water interests.

“We’ll take a hard look at it and hope that there can be a consensus at some point,” said David N. Kennedy, Deukmejian’s director of water resources.

Conservation groups are not even waiting to look at the specifics of the legislation that Costa said he will introduce in mid-February.

“It makes us sad that the old water buffaloes seem once again to have chosen the path of conflict and polarization rather than the path of consensus,” said Thomas J. Graff, senior attorney for the Environmental Defense Fund.

If Costa pushes his proposal, “it will mean another water war,” said Gerald Meral, executive director of the Planning and Conservation League. “I’d hate to see it, but if it has to be, it has to be.”

Both Meral and Graff said that over the past few years progress has been made in solving some of the problems of the delta by quiet negotiation among environmental groups, water contractors and government officials.

Recently, for example, the Deukmejian Administration signed what has been hailed as a “historic” water agreement with the federal government, requiring that the federal Central Valley Project and the State Water Project work together to deliver water to their customers while protecting the fragile environment of the delta and San Francisco Bay.

Late last year, the Administration signed off on a plan to help restore delta fisheries as a trade-off for authorization to to expand the state pumping plant. As a result, the Department of Water Resources intends to call for bids later this year on four new pumps which will permit the pumping of more water during months when delta flows are at their peak.

Heart of System

The Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta is a vast area of man-made islands interspersed by an estimated 1,000 miles of navigable waterways and providing important habitats for fish and wildlife. It is also the heart of the state and federal water projects, which at certain times of year pump so much water that the San Joaquin River flows backward toward the giant pumping stations.

There is wide agreement that water quality in the delta has deteriorated in recent years, but there has been little agreement on what to do about it.

In 1982, voters rejected plans to build the Peripheral Canal--a waterway that would have diverted high-quality Sacramento River water around the delta for shipment south. Supporters said that the canal would increase water exports while at the same time protecting the delta environment. But environmentalists and growers that draw their water from the delta combined forces to defeat the measure.

Costa argued Monday that the different interest groups may now be ready to bury their differences and work out solutions.

Concern for Quality

And he released a report prepared by a committee of various water interests to support his view. The group included the Metropolitan Water District, water contractors, business groups, farmers, and hunting and fishing organizations. Their report calls for assuring quality for water users, solving problems created by contaminated agricultural drainage, and rebuilding delta levees, several of which failed during last year’s heavy rains.