Water: a New Age

Welcome to a stringent new water age in California. With demand exceeding supply, the cities no longer can reach into distant mountain ranges to capture all the water that they want. At the same time, the state Water Resources Control Board has been granted extraordinary new powers by the courts to arbitrate competing needs and to balance and allocate limited supplies.

The board has begun to exercise this authority with vigor through a three-year process of setting new water-quality standards in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, from which is pumped about 40% of the state’s drinking water and massive irrigation supplies. The main purpose is to protect the environment of the delta and, to the extent necessary, of San Francisco Bay. But the level of those standards also will dictate how much northern water can be diverted from the delta to California’s agricultural heartland and urban Southern California.

The first results of the board’s work are in, and Southern California water officials are in shock. The standards proposed by the board staff would severely limit diversions and impose unprecedented water-conservation requirements on all of the state. One Southern California water official described the proposed plan as a dagger plunged into the heart of the Southland.

The situation is not that threatening, but the water board staff will have to be mighty persuasive if it is going to convince Southern California that the cost of saving some delta fish is nothing less than the economic future of the area.

The goals of the proposed new water regimen are sound. There is far too much waste. The bay and delta are natural treasurers that must be protected. Delta fish life certainly has suffered since the start of pumping by the state Water Project and the federal Central Valley project.

But even the experts are not sure what is causing the striped-bass population to plummet, or what is needed to reverse the decline. The proposed approach seems to be to cut back delta exports to 1985 levels and see if the bass recover. Southern California can compensate for the loss by saving 1 million acre-feet of water by the year 2010, an amount greater than all of the city of Los Angeles uses now. As San Joaquin Valley farmers are forced to conserve, the Southland could pick up the savings.

Officials of the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California view this as an attempt to pit city folk against the farmers. They don’t like it, although much of the future urban water needs certainly will come from water now used with gross inefficiency to irrigate pastureland and crops. One acre-foot of water will supply needs of two urban families for a year, but raise only a third of an acre of cotton.

Nor are the project operators happy about the changing of environmental protections already negotiated with state and federal fish-and-game agencies. One case is an agreement to provide delta water to sustain wildlife and habitat in the Suisun Marsh. Why negotiate agreements if the water board is going to undermine them?

The staff standards are far from final. The water board will hold lengthy hearings before adopting them or some other standards. The result probably will be challenged in court.

But the staff is correct in declaring that not all demands can be met and that the state must adopt a new water ethic. The courts will require that environmental protections be provided. Whether the extensive water savings proposed in the draft plan are realistic, however, remains to be demonstrated at future hearings.

The water board has set out to do exactly what it should be doing: making the tough choices of water allocation in California with an eye to a near future when the state does not have enough to justify any waste--whether from sloppy farm irrigation or from hosing off sidewalks in Glendale or Marin County. Whether the proposed plan meets the board’s object of fairness and balance remains to be seen. Whether the board can achieve its goals without creating so many potential confrontations and likely court challenges seems probable.