Senate Puts Aside Differences, OKs Major Water Bill

Northerners and southerners alike teamed up in the Senate on Thursday to vote final legislative approval to a major $170-million water bill to rehabilitate decrepit levees in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta and finance environmental improvements elsewhere.

Putting aside, at least for now, long-held suspicions and mistrust of one another, the two sides joined to send what some lawmakers called “historic” legislation to Gov. George Deukmejian. The lopsided vote was 32 to 2.

Called Good for State

“This is something good for all California,” declared Sen. Ruben Ayala (D-Chino), a supporter of the bill who for years has been a champion of legislation to develop more northern water for export to rapidly growing Southern California.

A spokesman for Deukmejian said the governor is neutral on the bill, but noted he has supported similar proposals. The bill was strongly endorsed by state Water Resources Director David N. Kennedy, who helped to craft it.

Basically, the measure would spend $12 million a year for the next 10 years on restoring and maintaining the deteriorating levees that channel water through 700 miles of rivers and sloughs in the scenic and ecologically sensitive delta. The sprawling delta is the chief collecting pool of the California Water Project.

A major fear is that if weakened levees that protect islands in the western delta near San Francisco Bay were to collapse, fresh water that normally would flow out of the delta into San Francisco Bay would flood the islands.

The diminished freshwater outflow would permit salt water from the bay to surge deep into the delta, contaminating fresh water used for export to the farms of the San Joaquin Valley and the urban centers of Southern California.

“Should the levees break, the saltwater intrusion would get into the California Aqueduct and that is the kind of water we would be providing for our constituents in Southern California,” Ayala warned.

Significantly, the legislation is silent on the issue of further water development, neither authorizing nor prohibiting new projects. This deliberate omission forged the compromise and avoided another divisive water fight.

Symbolic Gesture

The bill was originally carried by Ayala who gave the authorship “as an olive branch” to Sen. Daniel Boatwright (D-Concord), a fierce opponent of sending additional water to the south. The proposal represented the first time in eight years that the Legislature had approved a major water bill.

In 1980, the Legislature passed and then-Gov. Edmund G. Brown Jr. signed a major water development bill calling for a controversial Peripheral Canal around the delta. However, the law was submitted to a referendum in 1982. It was defeated due to heavy opposition in Northern California.

Since then, attempts have been made to enact other major water development bills, including one strongly supported by Deukmejian in 1984. Each met with defeat, pitting legislators from the north and south against each other and environmentalists against water developers.

After loss of its bill, the Deukmejian Administration in 1984 switched its strategy and embarked on a course of unilaterally making additions to the California Water Project under existing law without asking the Legislature for help, a policy that has frustrated and angered some lawmakers.

The policy, carried out by David N. Kennedy, director of water resources, relies heavily on non-confrontational negotiations with conservation groups, local and state government entities, water users and developers.

For example, four new pumps are being installed in the delta under an agreement with the Fish and Game Department to provide additional protection for the delta fisheries.

Compromise Fashioned

Facing the reality that no major water development was likely to win approval of the Legislature this year, Ayala, Boatwright, conservationists and water users such as the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California and others met quietly late last year and fashioned the compromise delta levees rehabilitation bill.

Impetus was added by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which had warned the Deukmejian Administration that unless the state made a significant commitment of money to levee repair and maintenance it would no longer provide federal aid for levee damage caused by periodic winter flooding.

In addition, the legislation earmarks $50 million over the next 10 years for environmental protection and water quality improvement in the delta, San Francisco Bay, Suisun Marsh northeast of San Francisco and the Salton Sea and its tributaries.

Supporters of the measure insisted that the levees--peat dirt structures which have repeatedly broken during the last eight years--must be rehabilitated.

Threat to South

Sen. John Garamendi (D-Walnut Grove), who represents a portion of the delta, told the Senate that if a levee break “occurs, it is possible the California water system would be shut down. That is why Southern California signed on (in support of the bill.)”

Boatwright, whose district also includes parts of the delta and whose constituency is highly suspicious of the motives of southern water interests, asserted that the bill contains “no mechanism for additional water to be taken from the delta for Southern California.”

However, Sen. James Nielsen (R-Rohnert Park), whose district includes parts of the northern mountains watershed where the runoff flows south, complained that the bill failed to provide protection for the north.