Off to a Good Start

1987 was a bad year when it came to reconciling Northern and Southern California water interests. The acrimony mounted as the year progressed. 1988 is off to a splendid start with the announcement in Sacramento of an agreement for levee rehabilitation and maintenance in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta and for environmental protection.

Under the legislative proposal to be sponsored by Sens. Daniel E. Boatwright (D-Concord) and Ruben S. Ayala (D-Chino), the state would earmark $120 million over the next decade for levee work, with an additional $50 million going to fish and wildlife protection and to water-quality improvements in the delta, San Francisco Bay and the Salton Sea.

The agreement was reached last week between water-development and environmental groups from both north and south--including the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, the major customer of the state Water Project.

The proposal does not directly affect the project or its ability to export Northern California water to the south, but future operations of the project depend to a great degree on the mitigation of damage that project pumping has done to fisheries in the delta. Also, the collapse of levees protecting large islands in the western delta could allow the inflow of salty sea water, thus threatening the quality of river water reaching the pumps.

Similar legislation, providing $10 million a year for levees, was sidetracked at the end of the 1987 session. The new plan won support of Metropolitan and other state project water users when environmentalists dropped their insistence that the legislation include language prohibiting the spending of money on facilities that would directly or indirectly allow the state to increase water exports. At the same time, it would not specifically authorize any additional pumping.

Impetus for the agreement also came from the federal government, which threatened to withhold future funds for levee reconstruction and repairs if the state failed to put up a greater share. Washington has spent about $92 million for emergency repairs since 1980. Heavy winter flows through the delta, largely from the Sacramento River, have caused repeated levee failures and the flooding of delta islands--most of which are below sea level.

The lesson of the levee proposal is that the key to water progress in California is negotiation and consensus-building, as opposed to fighting and one-upmanship in the Legislature. The participants called the agreement historic. It will become that, however, only if all sides stick to it and see the measure through the Legislature without its being riddled by amendments that are designed to pander politically to one section of the state or the other. The delta may be located in Northern California, but it truly is an outstanding natural asset to all of California.