CALIFORNIA ELECTIONS / GOVERNOR : Wilson, Feinstein Part Ways on Water Policy

Republican Sen. Pete Wilson outlined a state water policy Tuesday that joins Democrat Dianne Feinstein in opposing construction of a peripheral canal to bring more water to Southern California.

But Wilson’s stand differs sharply from Feinstein’s proposal to get California farmers to cut their water use so city dwellers will have enough.

Wilson’s statement puts both gubernatorial candidates on record against a canal around the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta just as the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California is attempting to revive interest in the facility. The MWD wants the project to assure good drinking water for the 15 million Southern Californians who buy supplies from MWD member agencies.

Wilson supported the canal when he was mayor of San Diego, but said it no longer is a solution to California’s long-range water problems.

Feinstein also picked up the environmental theme in her home city of San Francisco, where she sought to project herself as the candidate of change in the Nov. 6 election. As a symbol of that change, she cited her support for Proposition 128, the environmental protection initiative its backers call “Big Green.” It is opposed by Wilson.

In 1984, California voters rejected a peripheral canal ballot measure with voters in the north opposing it by a margin of 9 to 1. Any expression of support for the canal almost certainly would hurt a candidate for governor in the water-conscious north.

Wilson’s water plan generally follows the cautious approach of the Deukmejian Administration of building offstream storage south of the Delta to capture surplus Sacramento River water during the wet winter months. The water, banked in new reservoirs and in underground storage basins, could be withdrawn for use during the dry months or droughts.

With such facilities, and greatly increased use of reclaimed sewage water, California can accommodate growth without suffering water supply shortages, Wilson said. He outlined the plan in an address to Los Angeles Town Hall and during a press conference near Los Angeles’ Tillman water reclamation plant, which spills--and wastes, Wilson argued--an estimated 40 million gallons a day into the Los Angeles River.

Feinstein has promised, if elected, to bring together opposing water factions to work out a vigorous new state water policy. “California can’t afford to careen from drought to drought, from crisis to crisis, or from conflict to conflict with no consensus on water development,” she said in a water policy speech late in the summer.

Both candidates are supporting strict new water quality standards for the Delta, the estuary southwest of Sacramento that is the source of much of the drinking water used in Southern California and to irrigate farms in the San Joaquin Valley. Such standards are seen as necessary to restore the Delta’s striped bass and salmon fisheries, which experts claim have been decimated by the effects of state and federal water project pumping from the estuary.

Wilson endorsed Proposition 148, a $380-million bond issue to finance local water storage projects, sewage and water treatment facilities and conservation programs. Feinstein endorsed the same proposal as it was moving through the Legislature.

But Wilson denounced Feinstein’s contention that a fractional reduction in farm water use could greatly ease the long-term shortages now being faced by many of California’s cities because farmers consume from 80% to 85% of California’s developed water supply.

“Why ration water when in fact you could have stored it?” he asked. “It simply doesn’t make sense. I don’t think she’s got a real water policy.”

Feinstein had said it was time to for urban and agricultural water users “to develop a system which shares a conservation methodology.” She said agriculture could save 645,000 acre-feet of water annually by the year 2010--the equivalent of three-fourths of Los Angeles’ annual water consumption--without jeopardizing farmers’ livelihoods. (An acre-foot is the amount of water that would cover one acre to a depth of one foot.) Water conservation bonds could help farmers finance more efficient irrigation systems, she said.

Wilson said farmers already conserve water as a matter of economic necessity. To impose further reductions on them would threaten the state’s agricultural economy and its hundreds of thousands of jobs, he said.

Wilson also attacked Feinstein’s opposition to the transfer of additional Northern California water to the south until new standards are set in the Delta and San Francisco Bay. This is the water that would be held in the storage facilities south of the Delta that both support. Wilson asked, “How’s she going to get it there, by helicopter?”

Most water management experts in California doubt if any additional supplies can be moved south until new standards are set and channel improvements are made in both the North and South Delta, a process that could take a minimum of several years if opposition from environmentalists can be overcome. One expert said the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency may withhold approval of the Los Banos Grandes offstream storage reservoir--which figures heavily in both the Wilson and Feinstein plans--until the state sets water standards that may preclude more water withdrawals from the Delta in any event.

In San Francisco, Feinstein sought to counter Wilson’s claim that his endorsement of term limits for state officials and legislators, announced in Sunday’s debate, makes him the candidate of change for California voters. “Environmentally, this is the candidacy of change,” she said. “It (Proposition 128) is the measure of change on the ballot.”

She also announced her opposition to the clear-cutting of timber. But she said she has not decided whether to back Proposition 130, the “Forests Forever” initiative that bans clear-cutting and provides $742 million in bonds to buy the remaining old-growth redwood forests in private ownership.

Wilson has announced he is opposing all the environmental-oriented initiatives on the ballot because they are too complex and too rigid in a time of changing scientific standards and interpretations. His opposition extends to Proposition 135, an initiative supported by the agricultural industry to revise the rules on the use of pesticides in California. Proposition 135 is being promoted by farm groups as an alternative to the strict pesticide regulation provisions of Proposition 128, the environmental protection measure.

Times political writer Cathleen Decker contributed to this story.