Water: Still a State Riddle

One more study is not going to solve California’s growing water-supply problems. It might, however, help cut through the rhetoric that clouds the most contentious issue of the current water debate: the effect of massive water project pumping on the environment of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta and San Francisco Bay. The Legislature thus should give serious consideration to the idea of state Sen. Quentin L. Kopp (I-San Francisco) to finance a credible independent scientific survey of fresh water needs in the critical Northern California estuary.

The state Water Resources Control Board groped for a resolution of this issue early in the year with its draft plan for protecting water quality in the estuary. But the plan outraged San Joaquin Valley farmers and Southern California water interests by proposing curtailed pumping from the delta by the federal Central Valley Project and the State Water Project. At the same time, the proposal failed to satisfy environmentalists and Northern California interests who wanted much more fresh water left in the natural system. The plan was technically defective and politically inept. The board lost credibility, and its timetable for setting new water standards was set back by at least a year.

Drought and near-drought have no respect for the bureaucratic process. Water shortages the past three years have illustrated just how fragile the state’s water supplies can be unless California fashions a better water distribution and management system. That will remain an elusive goal until there is some agreement on how much water can be pumped safely from the delta.

There have been plenty of “scientific” studies of the effects of pumping since water exports began three decades ago. The results vary wildly, ranging from claims of actual improvement of the environment over historic conditions to devastation of striped bass and salmon fisheries. No one accepts anyone else’s study. And the big water exporting agencies further argue that there is no guarantee that leaving more water in the natural system will restore the fish life that has declined so dramatically. A new study will not resolve all these questions, but it might at least determine a range of diversions that could be made without causing further damage to the bay/delta environment. The Water Resources Control Board would use the results in the setting of its final water quality standards.

Still, the long-term solution to the bay/delta problem will have to be political, not technical. There simply is not enough water in the system to maintain the environment and to satisfy all the future anticipated demands of agriculture and urban growth in both Northern and Southern California. Taking account of this, the water board proposed a new California water ethic that involved massive savings through conservation. But the plan failed to quantify such savings, either on the farm or in the cities.

To fill that gap, two previously competing water groups have come together to form the state Water Conservation Coalition. They are the northern-based Committee for Water Policy Consensus under Contra Costa County Supervisor Sunne Wright McPeak and the Southern California Water Committee chaired by Ventura County Supervisor John Flynn. The new committee is working with both cities and farmers to find out just how much water can be saved. This is not the first North-South cooperative effort. Managers of the biggest urban water agencies put together an organization last year to explore cooperative ways to increase supplies.

As welcome as such ad hoc efforts are, they can only nibble at the edges of the California water dilemma. Real solutions are possible only when statewide leadership at the highest level decides it no longer can ignore the problem.