Vote Pulls Plug on Assemblyman Peace’s Water Plan

The bid of Assemblyman Steve Peace (D-Rancho San Diego) to have water meters installed in Sacramento has apparently dried up.

Peace’s controversial bill sought to encourage water conservation by forcing homeowners in the state capital to retrofit their homes with the meters by the end of the century.

Although there are other areas without residential meters--including Brawley, which is in Peace’s eastern San Diego and Imperial County district--Peace singled out homeowners in Sacramento because it is the largest urban area without the devices, he has said.

The measure caused general alarm in Sacramento, especially when it cleared the Assembly last month after emotional debate pitting Capital-area legislators against those from districts parched by the drought.

But hometown muscle pulled the plug on the Peace bill.

After Peace decided to pull it from the agenda of a hostile Senate Agriculture and Water Committee last week, Sen. Leroy F. Greene (D-Carmichael) intervened during a hearing Saturday to make sure his colleagues denied a special dispensation to have the measure rescheduled for a hearing before the end of the legislative session in September. That move effectively killed the Peace bill.

“We sank it,” Greene said. “I suggested that, while legislators are sympathetic toward district bills--which deal with issues in a given district--in this particular case, Assemblyman Peace missed his own district by 500 miles and landed right in the middle of mine.”

Greene said Peace’s arguments that the bill would promote water conservation in Sacramento, which is considered to be water-rich since it is cradled by the Sacramento and American rivers, were made moot by the fact that the first month of a mandatory conservation program cut the city’s water usage by 26%.

With such a savings, the Peace bill would accomplish very little for the $100 million it would have cost Sacramento residents to retrofit their homes with meters, argued Greene.

“There’s one thing that Peace can do for me,” said Greene. “Leave me in peace.”

Tuesday night, the Senate took the Peace bill, yanked it from the committee agenda, gutted it and inserted all new language related to the state’s current budget woes.

Now, the bill imposes an annual 50-cent fee on water districts for each connection it has--a new tax that will generate an estimated $3.6 million for state coffers.