Turning Off the Water Myths

The focal point of California water fights is this old saw: The north has the water and the south takes it. But that is a simplistic notion that holds even less water today than it did just a month ago.

There is the common belief that state Water Project supplies all flow directly to Kern County farmers and to the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California. Those areas do get the bulk of state Water Project supplies, but state project customers also include the counties of Butte, Plumas, Napa, Solano, Alameda and Santa Clara. In fact, San Francisco Bay, the heart of opposition to expansion of the project, is virtually ringed by state Water Project consumers.

Another perception is that the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation’s Central Valley Project takes the north’s water and sells it to San Joaquin Valley farmers. But the Central Valley Project markets much of its supply in the Sacramento Valley and in Contra Costa County, part of the rapidly expanding East Bay suburban complex.

And late in June the Central Valley Project began sending federal water to the booming Santa Clara Valley. The $570-million San Felipe unit ultimately will deliver up to 152,500 acrefeet of water a year, enough to sustain the residential needs of more than half a million people and provide the valley with 25% of its total water supply.

So now five San Francisco Bay area counties receive substantial amounts of water from the state Water Project and the federal Central Valley Project. Santa Clara County gets water from both.

The five counties share a critical link with the San Joaquin Valley farmers and Southern California: The water that they receive from the two projects comes to them out of the Sacramento-San Joaquin delta. The delta, of course, has been the focal point for California’s north-south water wars for the past 20 years.

The truth is that all Californians have a vital stake in maintaining the environmental integrity of the delta, and a responsibility for doing so. This is something for the Legislature to keep in mind as it battles over various measures affecting the state Water Project.

And while the Legislature fiddles, the real longterm fate of California water development may be decided in another forum. The state Water Resources Control Board will begin hearings today that will lead in three or four years to the setting of new water-quality standards for the delta and San Francisco Bay. In the relative calm of semi-judicial proceedings, the board will consider all the state’s demands and environmental interests before making water-rights decisions that will guide water development in California for decades to come.

The Legislature can fuss and fight along old north-south lines, but it is the Water Resources Control Board that is far more likely to develop a rational, realistic water future for California.