2 Water Bill Backers May Change Votes

Two Southern Californians, who recently provided key votes to win narrow passage in the Assembly of a major water bill, warned Monday that there is a “new coalition” of Southland legislators who no longer will march “lock-step” to approve water legislation.

The emergence of this coalition surfaced at a press conference called by Assemblymen Richard Katz (D-Sepulveda) and Frank Hill (R-Whittier), where they assailed Assemblyman Jim Costa (D-Fresno) for stripping out environmental and consumer protection amendments that they earlier had put into Costa’s water bill over his opposition.

They warned that if the amendments are not restored, they intend to vote against the bill when it comes up for final legislative passage, perhaps later this summer or sometime next year.

Costa issued a statement accusing the pair of “turning their backs on their constituents” and claiming that “I’d hate to be in Assemblymen Hill’s and Katz’s shoes when Southern California goes on permanent water rationing.”

The Katz amendment would require State Water Project contractors, primarily the sprawling Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, to sell its surplus supplies at market rates and spend the profits by reducing property taxes or water rates or by financing water conservation programs.

Currently, the MWD can sell its surplus water at discounted rates to growers in Kern County.

The Hill amendment would require that any adverse consequences of operations of the State Water Project to the threatened fishery of the San Francisco Bay and Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta estuary be “fully offset” by water contractors.

Costa fiercely opposed the amendments. After the bill cleared the Assembly on June 27 and went to the Senate with only two votes to spare, he quietly stripped the changes from the bill, including one by Speaker Willie Brown (D-San Francisco) that would have offered an enhanced level of environmental protection to the bay.

Costa contended that the amendments were aimed at killing his bill rather than improving it. The legislation, basically, envisions exporting more surplus water from Northern California to the southern San Joaquin Valley and Southern California by enlarging rivers and sloughs in the delta. Additionally, it would allow construction of a new canal across 13 miles of the delta.

Katz and Hill, who counted themselves as the 42nd and 43rd vote for the bill when it narrowly passed the Assembly even with the amendments, said they intend to vote “no” when the measure comes up for a final vote unless the amendments are restored.

Katz and Hill said the “new coalition” includes members of both parties who are concerned about protection of fish, wildlife and the natural environment of the delta and want the Southern California water customer to receive the best economic bargain possible from water legislation.

They indicated that the group now consists of only a handful of legislators, but enough to block passage of water legislation that does not meet their standards.

“Not all Southern Californians are prepared to walk lock-step in tune with Metropolitan Water District just because they are the guys who say it ought to be done this way,” Katz said. “There are other ways and other avenues open to us that need to be explored.”

He told reporters, “What you are seeing for the first time is Southern California legislators saying the Met (MWD) doesn’t have all the answers.” He said the MWD’s “basic attitude” is to pour concrete and enlarge canals “and that is the only way we know how to do business.”

Hill, usually not regarded as an ally of environmentalists, told reporters that the “new coalition” believes that “we can do things, but we are going to do them the right way. . . . We’re not automatically going to assume that what MWD says, that is how it has to be. We’re no longer part of that.”

In his statement, Costa, who has worked for three years to try to develop a compromise plan supported by environmental groups, water contractors, fishermen and delta interests, asserted that Katz’s “real agenda is to kill my legislation for his Northern California environmental obstructionist friends. . . .”

Hill’s “real agenda,” Costa asserted, is to put “Republican Party loyalty before the people who elected him” and kill the bill so that Gov. George Deukmejian “does not have to deal responsibly with water development.”