Water, Water Everywhere? So What’s the Problem? : The week in review as California confronts a continuing supply crisis

LAST WEEK: It was only human to watch raindrops slide down a windowpane and assume that they were washing away the drought emergency. They’re not, and thinking so only makes the job of Gov. Pete Wilson more difficult--and more urgent. Wilson is the first governor with a good chance to change water policy. No matter how touchy, he must seize that chance. The dreadful consequences of failure could be felt as early as next year, given the caprice of our climate.

For even though storms continue to drench Northern and Southern California, the drought is far from broken. Rains and runoff doubled prestorm levels in federal reservoirs, but that still leaves less than 25% of the water that the Central Valley Project delivers in normal years. Shasta, California’s biggest reservoir, is at half the level it should be for this time of year.

San Diego, the last of the state’s major cities without rationing, is about to see the handwriting in the dust. San Diego’s County Water Authority voted to cut deliveries by 50% in the metropolitan area.

The U.S. House Committee on Interior and Insular Affairs approved a bill to allow federal water officials in California to create a water bank similar to one now arranging exchanges of state water, buying surpluses in one area and selling them in regions hardest hit by drought.

In most cases, local rationing will stay in place and may even intensify. There is virtually no chance that what remains of California’s rainy season can fill reservoirs to normal levels.

WHAT STILL MUST BE DONE: For nearly five dry years, nature conspired to warn California that the deadline had passed for changing water laws and habits to survive a serious drought.

Now, in a matter of days it has conspired, with a series of storms, to relax the pressure on political leaders to make basic changes in the way water is divided up among the state’s 30 million people. In the short term, change will mean dividing voters into groups of winners and losers, work that all politicians are anxious to dodge. But some things must be done:

Water Bank --The state Department of Water Resources has contracted with farmers who are willing not to plant crops this year--for a price--to buy 250,000 acre-feet of water, about 25% of its prestorm goal. The aim is to create a water bank. The state is paying $125 for an acre-foot, enough to supply the needs of five urban residents for a year. It is going slowly because most farmers are holding out for $250 to $300 an acre-foot.

There probably is a risk of price-gouging if the state does nothing to try to hold prices down, but the most important aspect of the water bank is bypassing outmoded water customs and establishing market incentives as the way to allocate water supplies. At least in this early going, the state should let buyers say what they think water is worth, rather than setting arbitrary prices.

There are public policy questions about letting prices rise to a point where the rich can afford all they need and the poor cannot, but those are many years off in California.

Delta Water Quality-- One case of official inaction caused by the storms was actually welcome. Wilson’s drought task force, which less than two weeks ago was formally assuming that no more rain would fall, withdrew a request to hold back Sacramento River water, a move that would have diminished the power of fresh water flows to keep the brackish water of San Francisco Bay out of farmland and water that eventually goes to households in Southern California. It will take another look at the situation next month.

LESSON: Southern California may squeak through a fifth dry year without major damage to crops or the economy, and the rainy season that starts in the autumn may actually be rainy. But California can never again take rain for granted. It is urgent that water policies be changed to reflect that.