Pass More Laws, Set More Limits? How I’d Help the Environment : Manage growth with regional entities and conserve water by storage and recycling.

Clean Air --The most dramatic way to clean polluted air is to move, as the state of California has proposed, to alternative fueled vehicles beginning with model year 1994. Regrettably, the proposed federal statute permits only California to impose such a mandate and denies other states that same authority.

How much fairer it would be to spread the cost burden of achieving clean-car technology over the broad base of customers of the giant auto makers and oil companies than to require the operators of a mom-and-pop dry-cleaning business to purchase a $80,000 piece of equipment to reduce their cleaning solvents emissions.

It would also be far wiser to move to alternative fuels to reduce U.S. dependency on imported oil.

Regional government --Entities such as the South Coast Air Quality Management District that are exclusively concerned with clean air do serve a useful purpose. It makes sense to deal with clean air problems by regulation and enforcement through a local entity that conforms to geographic rather than political boundaries.

It makes no sense to usurp local land use jurisdiction, which should properly be reserved to local governments, and transfer such authority to the state or newly created regional body. A local decision that would threaten air or water quality can be prevented by imposing the checks contained in existing law.

Growth Management --Local governments have an obligation to regulate land use within their boundaries and to engage in coordinated planning and cooperation with other local agencies on a regional basis.

Proper growth management should include directing residential development into areas where there are existing public facilities and services, or where they can be provided without a premature, inefficient and costly extension of them. It includes aggressive economic development, so that jobs keep pace with population growth. It includes taking actions to prevent congestion and other activities that threaten the quality of air or water.

Limiting immigration --A state cannot limit immigration. Though we should celebrate our diversity as a strength and distinct cultural asset, there is a limit on the financial burden the federal government can equitably impose through allocation of refugees. Once refugees or legal immigrants are admitted to the United States, they, like citizens from other states, have a right of travel that is guaranteed by the Constitution. States have tried (Hawaii repeatedly) to impose residency requirements as a bar to eligibility for state benefits, but the Supreme Court has consistently held such efforts unconstitutional.

Clean water --California’s problem is less a shortage of clean water than a shortage of water.

Not that we have solved all our problems of water quality. But conscientious implementation by state and local water agencies of the provisions of Proposition 65 relating to clean drinking water and those of the federal Clean Water Act will address most problems of quality.

The most important problem in terms of the quality of drinking water is ensuring adequate freshwater flows into California’s great “well,” the Sacramento River Delta, to prevent saltwater intrusion and to ensure sufficient quality in the delta and San Francisco Bay.

Determining the amount of freshwater flows from the Sacramento River into the delta to ensure such quality is the task of an EPA study committee whose work I have supported by securing a federal grant of $12 million. Their efforts must be considered by the state Water Resources Control Board.

Conservation by off-stream storage of surplus water-- California is suffering its fourth year of drought. In an average year we enjoy enough precipitation in the winter through snowfall and storms to produce for a brief time what is surplus water, the kind of runoff that in a matter of hours or at best days, simply flows out to sea. Except for the very temporary flushing condition that it provides in improving the water quality of the bay and the delta, that surplus is lost.

What we must do instead is to so manage our resources to guarantee the year - round water quality of the delta and the bay. We need greatly expanded off-stream storage capacity. Two obvious examples are the reservoir that has been authorized at the Los Banos Grandes and the remarkable natural underground storage capacity of the aquifer in Kern County.

Conservation by recycling --We recycle less than 1% of the total supply of water that we use in California. The Tillman Reclamation Center is now treating 40 million gallons of water a day to a standard that is described as advanced secondary. And what happens then? I watched it wash out to sea through the Los Angeles River. We must recycle such water. That is why I have endorsed Proposition 148, which authorizes a $380-million bond issue.

There is no question about what the priorities are. People are the first priority. The users in the cities, in the suburbs come first and agriculture comes second. But it makes more sense to conserve a sufficient amount through recycling and through storage so that we do not have to artificially constrict an industry important to all California.

Agriculture is important to all of us because it provides employment to hundreds of thousands of Californians--all of those in the chain of marketing and distribution from the fields, to the packing sheds, to the supermarkets.