New Canal Called Vital by Officials From Region : Drought: State board is told a facility is needed to bring more water south from Delta. Environmentalists reiterate their resolve to block such a plan. ‘

Carefully refraining from mentioning it by name, a series of Southern California officials testified Monday that construction of a peripheral canal or similar facility in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta is vital to preventing future water shortages.

A peripheral canal or an enlarged Delta channel would improve drinking water quality, help imperiled fisheries and enhance the efficiency of water transfers through the Northern California estuary, officials argued at a hearing before the State Water Resources Control Board.

“These new state project facilities, which would be tied to strong guarantees that they would not be operated in a manner harmful to the environment, will be essential if Southern California is to have dependable supplies of high quality water in the future,” Duane Georgeson, assistant general manager of the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, told the state board.

Across town, a key committee of the MWD’s board of directors met to unanimously recommend that the water wholesaler’s drastic 50% rationing plan be rolled back to 31%. The full board is to vote on the rollbacks today.

At the Gene Autry Western Heritage Museum, where Georgeson was making his presentation to the state board, the focus was on the long-range forecast.

“Unless we solve water supply problems that have been stalemated for decades, shortages will become a way of life” in Southern California, Georgeson said in urging the board to consider the region’s mounting needs.

The powerful state water board met in Los Angeles to launch the final phase of its historic re-examination of the Delta, a remarkable tangle of waterways that spill into San Francisco Bay. This phase--the final segment of an exhaustive process begun in 1987--focuses on water rights and could lead to a controversial reallocation of Delta flows.

The Delta, source of almost half of California’s drinking water supply, serves as the fulcrum for the massive State Water Project, which was built in the 1960s to satisfy water demands of San Joaquin Valley farms and Southern California. Two major rivers--the Sacramento and San Joaquin--empty into the estuary. Giant pumps divert supplies into the California Aqueduct for shipment south.

The MWD and its 27 member agencies are anxious to protect and increase those shipments in light of spiraling population growth and the decline of alternative water sources for Southern California.

Supplies from the Mono Basin and Owens Valley, once the principal source for Los Angeles, are now restricted by court rulings, while many local ground water basins have been contaminated by industrial solvents and agricultural runoff. At the same time, MWD’s share of Colorado River water has been cut in half.

A key part of the MWD’s answer to the dilemma centers on what veteran water managers now refer to as “the P word”--the notorious Peripheral Canal. It is a solution embraced by other State Water Project contractors, including Kern County farmer Fred Starrh, who told the board that water cuts had forced him to lay off 40 people and fallow his land this year.

Given the bitter legacy of the canal, such support could prove scarce. In 1982, a plan to build a $1.2-billion channel around the edge of the Delta was defeated at the polls on the strength of an overwhelming negative vote in the north. The fiercest opponents were environmentalists who viewed the effort as a “water grab” that would drain dry northern rivers and reservoirs.

On Monday, environmentalists reiterated their resolve to block a canal or other Delta facility and testified that such expensive measures would not be necessary if Californians would husband existing water supplies more carefully.

Meanwhile, Southern California’s agricultural interests are likely to get the greatest relief of all the MWD’s customers if the district’s full board votes as expected today to approve rollbacks in rates and water delivery reductions.

Under the MWD’s existing plan, which began April 1, water supplies are cut by 90% to agricultural interests and by 30% to municipal users--for an overall 50% cut. Under the recommendation made by the agency staff last week and approved by the key Water Problems Committee on Monday, agricultural cuts would be rolled back to 50%, and municipal users to 20%--for an overall 31% reduction.