Plan to Meet Future Water Demands Draws Fire

A Deukmejian Administration blueprint for meeting the projected demands for water of rapidly growing California during the next 22 years ran into a buzz saw of criticism Thursday.

The document essentially asserts that with careful management and completion of projects already authorized, the state can satisfy its expected water needs without turning to the Legislature for major new waterworks.

But at a special hearing of the Senate and Assembly water committees, the report, issued Dec. 30 by the Department of Water Resources, was denounced by lawmakers and witnesses alike as overly optimistic, superficial and unbalanced.

Water Resources Director David Kennedy, the target of the three-hour attack, defended the forecast without apology and told the lawmakers that the Administration intends to accomplish its water program through the administrative regulatory process without further help from the Legislature.

“This is going to be a long and difficult process,” he testified at one point. Later he told the lawmakers, “I have come to the conclusion that we are not going to solve water problems with big (legislative) packages with something for everybody.”

But Sen. Ruben S. Ayala (D-Chino), a tenacious author of water development legislation and a critic of the Administration’s water programs, insisted that the forecast “painted a rosy picture” but overlooked the consequences if the authorized projects are not built.

Two Northern Californians, Republican Sens. John Doolittle of Rocklin and James W. Nielsen of Rohnert Park, complained that the report failed to discuss protecting northern watersheds against further exporting of water to the south.

Carl Boronkay, general manager of the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, testified that under the state plan “we are going to be short of water by the year 2000.”