Unfair Headhunting

Anger is sweeping California’s tightly knit fraternity of water managers over a draft plan that would severely limit water exports from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta to Southern California. The target of the ire is Chairman W. Don Maughan of the state Water Resources Control Board, who is trying to soothe tempers by reiterating that all Californians will have to sacrifice in the future to stretch water supplies to meet demands.

The proposals are those of the board’s staff. Extensive hearings are planned before the board itself will make any decisions. Nevertheless, the cry for Maughan’s head is making the rounds of major water-user organizations that feel particularly wounded by the draft plan. Maughan’s term expires in January, and pressure is mounting on Gov. George Deukmejian to replace him.

This headhunting is ill-timed and unfair to Maughan, whose 1986 appointment was universally applauded. California needs a strong, independent water arbiter; there is no one else on the horizon with Maughan’s experience and integrity, and who commands such respect. To make a change less than halfway through the delta hearing process would be a major mistake.

The controversy stems from the board’s three-year program to set new water-quality standards in the delta--through which flows the major part of California’s water supplies for agriculture, industry and urban home use. The board must establish maximum levels of salt and other pollutants that would damage the environment--including fisheries, waterfowl habitat and delta farmlands.

The staff plan released in November did not just propose standards but sought to show who would have to sacrifice in order to meet them. No section of the state is spared. But San Joaquin Valley and Southern California officials were especially irate because they would bear the brunt of enforced water conservation and suffer under severe restrictions on the pumping from the delta--a level that is the equivalent of 1985 exports. People, they complain, would have to sacrifice to help some fish.

The staff work does seem to be inadequate in a number of respects, and many of its recommendations have been subject to widely varying interpretations. The staff acknowledged that it really doesn’t know how much water is needed to revive the delta bass, but made a stab in the dark and said, in effect, “Let’s see if this works.” Nor did the staff demonstrate just how Southern California is supposed to conserve 1 million acre-feet of water and still accommodate population growth over the next 20 years. The staff must be required to better support its conclusions in future hearings.

For now, the important point is that the board is not committed to accepting any staff proposals. All California water interests will be considered before any decisions are made.

The era of easy water is over. Someone has to make the difficult balancing decisions of future water supply and demand and environmental protection. The board is the legally established agency for doing that, and W. Don Maughan is the most able person to lead it in that task.