San Francisco Into the Pool : No One Is Immune From State’s Water-Shortage Problem

At last the link will be complete: San Francisco will tie into the State Water Project that the city has shunned and condemned all these years.

In an emergency, San Franciscans will be able to tap the project’s South Bay Aqueduct to get water from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. The delta is part of the estuarine system that Northern Californians have guarded so jealously against further water “raids” out of the south.

In the rare cases when San Francisco might have to turn on this tap, the amounts of water would be small. But symbolism is important in California water matters: When the link to the San Francisco system is completed, the 444-mile-long California Aqueduct will be capable of reaching every major metropolitan region in California.

But not to gloat, Southern Californians. The state’s water problems are too serious for that. The Bay Area had water rationing last summer. Marin County got emergency supplies from the state in 1977 and now wants to use the state’s North Bay Aqueduct to bring in a supplemental water supply.

The drought is most severe along the Central Coast, where Santa Barbara has banned lawn watering and drought police are tracking down violators. Ventura is ordering a 30% cut in residential use. Santa Barbara County long has been a partner in the State Water Project, sharing in the construction costs even though the county never has gotten a drop of state water. Santa Barbarans opposed building an 83-mile canal needed to connect them to the main aqueduct. Now, the county is seeking an emergency link to the California Aqueduct via a never-used oil pipeline.

Farther south, the growing area served by the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California faces future shortages if water is not conserved and supplies augmented.

San Francisco water chief Andy Moran said his city’s decision to seek state project help is strictly a plumbing matter and does not reflect any philosophical change regarding north-south water differences. Moran noted: “When we run into trouble on water supply, there just aren’t a whole lot of places we can go.” But that’s precisely the point.

As never before, California is one state with one general water distribution system. And that system can be managed to help all of California only if the old regional water antagonists realize that, in effect, they now are drinking through the same straw and from the same dwindling pool. Good reason for them to hang together rather than hanging out--to dry--separately.