Panel OKs Water Bill; New Battle Shaping Up

Controversial legislation that would authorize the Deukmejian Administration to devise ways to export more surplus northern water to the San Joaquin Valley and Southern California while requiring that the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta be protected won narrow approval of an Assembly committee Wednesday.

Over the opposition of environmental organizations and Northern California legislators, the Assembly Water Committee approved the bill on a 7-4 vote, the precise simple majority it needed in the 13-member panel. Two Northerners abstained.

The action represented the first Assembly battle in what is taking shape as the latest in a long and bitter history of legislative water fights, despite declarations by virtually everybody involved that nobody wants another war.

‘Silly, Counterproductive’

The author, committee Chairman Jim Costa (D-Fresno), deplored references to a water war as “silly and counterproductive,” declaring to opponents of his program: “I refuse to go to war. You can go to war by yourself.”

Other lawmakers and witnesses expressed hope that another water stalemate could be avoided and that some political settlement could be struck, but by the end of the 2 1/2-hour hearing it appeared that conflict may be unavoidable.

Basically, the bill would enable the Administration to decide what steps to take to allow pumping of additional water from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta while protecting the threatened salmon and striped bass fisheries and implementing a $100-million program to shore up aging delta levees and improve flood protection.

Serves as Pool

The sprawling delta is the pool from which surplus Northern California water is pumped into the aqueduct that transports it to the San Joaquin Valley and Southern California. Southern California long has sought more water for its rapidly expanding population and industries.

However, Northern Californians, especially those at the western end of the delta and San Francisco Bay, for generations have fought what many regard as a “raid” on their water.

Northern voters in 1982 defeated a referendum proposal passed by the Legislature and signed by then-Gov. Edmund G. Brown Jr. that would have created a 43-mile long Peripheral Canal that would have bypassed the delta and poured thousands of acre-feet of additional water directly into pumps for delivery to the south.

1984 Plan Killed

In 1984, the Assembly killed a plan supported by Gov. George Deukmejian that called for a 12-mile-long channel that would partially have skirted the delta and provided more water for Southern California. The proposal, which followed the alignment of the first 12 miles of the Peripheral Canal, was known to its critics as “Duke’s Ditch.”

Costa’s new bill specifically prohibits the Deukmejian Administration from resorting to the voter-rejected Peripheral Canal idea in solving the water problem. However, opponents say the 1960 law authorizing the California Water Project gave governors authority to build such a channel without further legislative approval.

‘Duke’s Ditch’

An earlier version of Costa’s bill contained what skeptics termed a barely disguised version of “Duke’s Ditch.” He amended that provision out, however, and in the version approved Wednesday he would order the state departments of Fish and Game and Water Resources to make agreements that would enhance the threatened fishery.

To do so, the Department of Water Resources would take such controversial actions as enlarging and widening rivers and channels. These steps are opposed by environmentalist who say valuable riparian habitat would be lost and by boaters who prize the natural beauty of the channel banks.

This would enable more water to flow through the delta in wet years. That, in turn, would permit more water to be pumped out of the delta without causing a reversal of the flow patterns that protect water quality and migrating fish in the southern part of the estuary.