CALIFORNIA ELECTIONS / GOVERNOR : Feinstein Says She Would Serve as State’s Peacemaker

A month away from the primary election, Dianne Feinstein is appealing to voters with a spare-the-specifics message that she alone will be able to sit enemies down at the same table and work out friendly solutions to the state’s pressing problems.

While her counterpart, Atty. Gen. John K. Van de Kamp, has pressed a series of specific initiatives, Feinstein has proclaimed the role of governor as peacemaking mediator.

Both played those roles Tuesday, when Feinstein argued to hundreds of water quality officials gathered here that the way to avoid historic clashes over water is to gather the warring parties--north and south, agriculture and urban interests--to forge a statewide water policy.

“A governor can bring the factions together,” said the former San Francisco mayor. “It’s time to end the water wars once and for all.

“California is rudderless and there isn’t going to be a water plan without the strong leadership a governor can apply,” she added later.

Queried by a panel at the forum to kick off Water Awareness Week and later by reporters, Feinstein was at times reluctant to sanction or oppose specific solutions.

She was adamant, for example, about her opposition to the Peripheral Canal, the waterway which would have wound around the Sacramento Delta to bring water to thirsty Southern Californians--and which was defeated by voters eight years ago.

But later, citing her concerns about potential earthquake damage to fragile delta levees, she raised the possibility of constructing a different sort of canal through the same turf--a waterway she referred to as an “isolated conduit.”

“This idea is out there,” she said. “It needs careful examination.”

Feinstein also expressed regret over the mandatory water conservation tactics that have been imposed on residents of Santa Barbara and other particularly hard-hit communities in this fourth year of statewide drought.

“Everyone’s entitled to a little bit of lawn and be able to water it and a little rose that blooms and gets water,” she said. Later, however, she said she did support the restrictions placed on Santa Barbara residents.

Feinstein also expressed concerns about across-the-board cuts in water use of the sort advocated by Van de Kamp, who has called for a 10% savings among urban residents and a 5% cut among agricultural consumers by the end of the next governor’s term.

The former mayor suggested that conservation be only one of a handful of tools used to ease the sting of the drought. Among the others are managing the growth of developments in water-needy areas, selling of water from mountain areas to more arid areas, and extensive banking of water in wet years.

“We’ve got to be flexible,” she said. “Different users have different capabilities.”

Van de Kamp issued his water policy last week, accenting his opposition to the Peripheral Canal and his call for mandatory conservation levels in every area of the state.

On Tuesday, appearing at the same event, Van de Kamp criticized the federal government for selling water at low, subsidized prices to farmers and, in particular, selling it to farmers raising subsidized crops. “Such policies discourage agricultural conservation,” he said.

Also on Tuesday, Van de Kamp launched a two-week radio advertising campaign aimed at rush-hour travelers in the state’s major cities--Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Diego and Sacramento.

The 60-second commercials, which campaign officials said will cost less than $100,000, are meant to buttress Van de Kamp’s previous television commercials and remind voters of the three initiatives to which the attorney general has tied his campaign.

The ads note that oil companies, chemical companies and some incumbent politicians have lined up against the initiatives, and then says: “Measure the man by the kind of enemies he’s made.”