Getting a Drought-Busting Act Together : WATER WATCH: Rallying round the Bradley bill

Sen. Bill Bradley (D-N.J.) and Gov. Pete Wilson had nothing to say last week about their brief meeting in Sacramento on water policy. The reason is simple: With government, as with flying trapezes, timing is everything.

They chatted before the last hearing on a Bradley bill to rewrite the law covering water in California that is controlled from Washington.

Bradley and Wilson served together in the Senate and they seem to agree on many points of the Bradley bill that could help get California through a sixth critically dry year if the weather stays its present course. But talking even in such vague terms now could make it harder, perhaps impossible, to work out details.

To thirsty California cities, the Bradley bill could be a drought-buster. But much of it, including strict environmental standards and the right of farmers to buy and sell federal water--something already possible with state water--is anathema to rural water agencies.

Wilson has so far tread gently on those toes, as he has with those of environmentalists and others while he searches for policies to protect the state against future drought. What he wants is a consensus, something all but impossible among cities, farmers and environmentalists.

Yet California needs the Bradley bill, or something very much like it, because it involves the largest single block of water in the state. It also would create strict controls over damage to fish and wildlife that result from federal water projects.

In a historic break with agriculture, Carl Boronkay, general manager of the Metropolitan Water District that distributes water to 15 million Southern Californians, supported that aspect of the Bradley bill and offered a vivid description of his reason.

In 20 years, Southern California may well get only 4 million acre-feet of water from existing sources to satisfy a demand for 5 million acre-feet. Buying irrigation water might be the MWD’s only hope. It is not likely that new dams or reservoirs will be available to make up that huge a gap.

In a letter to Bradley early in May, Wilson also supported that aspect of the bill, the buying and selling that Sacramento calls water banking. He agreed that fish and wildlife need more protection, though he had reservations about that aspect of Bradley’s approach, as did Boronkay.

Still, Wilson and Bradley are headed in the same general direction, something unusual in water policy. There may well be cause to hope that the Sacramento meeting signals that the question is when, not whether, they will agree on ways to wipe away the threat of drought that hangs over California’s future.