Water: Common Interests

Northern and Southern California water interests really are quite similar, state Assemblyman Phillip Isenberg (D-Sacramento) argued recently. That statement seems laughable, considering California’s legendary water wars and coming from a northerner. But Isenberg has a point worth considering as Californians struggle to solve their water problems.

Isenberg contended that north and south “have fallen victim to the organized economic greed of south Central Valley agricultural interests for whom the entire water debate is being constructed.” That may be a bit harsh on the San Joaquin Valley farmers, but the trend of the water debate in recent weeks indicates that the state is falling into the same old north-south trap.

The lines are drawn again in the Legislature over measures to authorize construction of a new channel in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta to allow more water to be exported to the San Joaquin Valley and Southern California.

The hydraulic history of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta is complex. But the political story, or myth, is simple: Northern Californians are convinced that Southern Californians want to take all the north’s water to wash their cars, fill their swimming pools and make the desert blossom into endless golf courses.

Southerners view their northern cousins as starry-eyed environmentalists who roam the mountains clutching their Sierra cups and gazing at alpine wildflowers. They want every river to run forever wild and free for rafting, or to muse about in poetry.

Both sides need to examine Isenberg’s words. State Water Project supplies go to the northern and southern San Francisco Bay areas as well as to Southern California and Kern County. The federal project was built to serve agriculture, but it also is critical to municipal and industrial users in growing Contra Costa County, and soon will begin sending water to the Santa Clara Valley through the $300-million San Felipe division. Oakland would benefit from a proposed new reservoir. These waters all come from the same source, the delta.

Isenberg defends southerners against charges of being inveterate water-wasters. And he notes that it is not Southern Californians who are polluting delta inflow with agricultural waste water. All of California has a stake in protecting water quality in the delta, which serves several million urbanites in Northern California as well as 13 million in the south. The regions thus need to reassess their interests and reshape the debate.

At stake in the new delta legislation, at most, is 500,000 acre-feet of additional water a year--about what it takes to irrigate a fifth of the Tulare Lake Basin cotton crop annually. An urban-rural water war certainly would be no more productive than a north-south one. But the two great urban centers of California need to be aware of their common interests and the potential to be achieved through cooperation.