Southern California’s Struggle to Meet Its Water Needs

Your editorial “Delta Wearing Thin” (Nov. 18) brought out the very reasons why I have for several years been attempting to gain legislative approval for a concerted 10-year, $100-million effort to rehabilitate the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta levee system.

Delta water flows into the homes of 16 million Californians, and all of us, whether from the north or south, have a stake in preserving and upgrading the levees. When the levees break water quality for all of us suffers from salt water intrusion.

As you have observed, taxpayers have spent over $120 million since 1980 on piecemeal emergency disaster relief in the delta. Many of those costs could have been avoided with an ongoing maintenance and rehabilitation program.

As the author of the delta levee repair bill, I would like to clarify the status of the bill. SB 182 is not dead.

It is in the Senate Agriculture and Water Resoures Committee, having already passed the Senate where it was linked over my objections to Sen. Ruben Ayala’s (D-Chino) water transfer bills and the Assembly where it was separated from Ayala’s bills. Because SB 182 came back to the Senate in a different form than when it passed, the bill was referred back to Ayala’s committee where the effect of the amendments will be discussed in January. I intend to seek final legislative approval at that time.

I have the greatest personal respect for Ayala. But we disagree on this major water policy issue because I, along with the Deukmejian Administration, the Planning and Conservation League, the Defenders of Wildlife and the California Farm Bureau, among many others, feel delta levee repair ought to stand on its own and not be linked politically to any sort of water transfer plan or made part of some north-south trade off.

It’s great to know The Times shares that view.

SEN. DANIEL E. BOATWRIGHT

D-Concord