N. Calif. Official Seeks Unity With South on Water

Thirty years ago, the cities along the Southern California coast made a political alliance with the farmers in the lower part of the San Joaquin Valley.

The object of the alliance was water. Northern California had a surplus. People in the urban Southland and the southern part of the Central Valley were worried whether they would have enough in the future.

The result was the California Water Project, which California voters approved by a narrow margin in 1960 in the first of the state’s North-South water struggles.

The Water Project led to construction of Oroville Dam on the Feather River to capture water that is shipped south by the 450-mile California Aqueduct. The alliance between the urban south and the San Joaquin Valley growers still holds, but today a cagey state legislator from Sacramento is out to break it up.

The vast majority of Californians now live in two huge urban concentrations, the San Francisco Bay Area in the north, and the Southern California costal strip.

Bond Between Cities

Democratic Assemblyman Phil Isenberg, a former Sacramento mayor, argues that the city folks in the north have more in common with the city people in the south than they have with San Joaquin agriculture. He says the cities should get the water they need for their people and their environments by reallocating it away from the growers.

In an article in the San Francisco Chronicle on April 23, Isenberg argued that the big problem in California water for the next 10 years will be the redistribution of existing supplies.

“The new supply for the (urban) south should come from water that’s currently used in the

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In north state minds, “L.A.” can summon up a picture of an arrogant male in dark glasses lolling in an overflowing swimming pool--possibly with a movie starlet--while the lawns and gardens of Northern California working people go dry.

Joaquin Valley,” Isenberg wrote.

“The water interests of urban Northern California and urban Southern California are similar. It is this commonality of interests that will dominate the future water debate in California.”

Win or lose, Isenberg has gone to war against one of the strongest prejudices of Northern California people. In water questions, they appear to be far more hostile to the urban south than to San Joaquin Valley farmers.

”. . . And Los Angeles isn’t going to get one drop of our precious water,” was the victory cry of a San Francisco newspaper columnist after northern counties registered votes of up to 95% against the Peripheral Canal plan in 1982.

The columnist was a typical Northern Californian. Like many people north of Modesto, he tended to lump human beings living in cities from Ventura to the Mexican border under the generic name of Los Angeles--usually shortened to “L.A.”

In north state minds “L.A.” can summon up a picture of an arrogant male in dark glasses lolling in an overflowing swimming pool--possibly with a movie starlet--while the lawns and gardens of Northern California working people go dry.

This image has almost nothing to do with the realities of urban Southern California’s water problem. Los Angeles has about 3.3 million of the 16 million people living in cities on the south state coast.

Los Angeles years ago got most of the water it needs by buying up the water rights of farmers in Inyo County. It doesn’t share it with anybody. In the 1976-77 drought it had one of the best water conservation records of any city in the state, according to data compiled by the state Department of Water Resources. Other cities like San Diego today have far more ferocious appetites for new water imports than Los Angeles.

The managers of Northern California’s environmental organizations know this, but the “L.A.” shibboleth has been very useful to them. It has helped them to mobilize millions of Northern California voters for the cause of saving water to protect the environment of San Francisco Bay and the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta.

However, north state legislators who support the environmental movement aren’t comfortable with the approach. Environmentalists don’t have to run for office, but politicians do. They are well aware that the majority of the state’s voters live in urban Southern California, and will continue to do so.

Going on record as telling the city folks of the south to go it alone in the next drought is not going to help the career of any ambitious Northern California politician who aspires to higher things.

The latest population estimate by the state Department of Finance last week reported that 16.06 million people--57.1 percent of the population of California--live in the seven counties south of the Tehachapis. The urban Southland also accounted for 60% of the state’s estimated population increase of 681,000 last year.

Isenberg was not the first Northern Californian in the Legislature to discover this.

Former state Sen. Ray Johnson, a Republican and later a political independent from Chico, backed GOP Gov. George Deukmejian’s plan to ship more water south in 1984, arguing that the North had to come to a settlement with the South on water issues.

“In a crisis they could gang up on us and impose any solution they want,” Johnson said. That viewpoint may have contributed to his retirement by rural Northern California voters in the next election.