WATER WATCH : Political Cloudburst

It will take a lot more than summer rains, such as those that fell on Los Angeles last week, to end our five-year drought. But if there’s any good to the dry spell, it’s the fact it forced Californians to rethink the way we use and allocate water. The state is growing so fast that water shortages are now inevitable--even without a drought--unless changes are made in archaic water laws at both the state and federal level.

A little more progress may be made this week in the Legislature. Tuesday, the Senate’s Agriculture Committee takes up AB 2090, a key reform bill by Assemblyman Richard Katz (D-Sylmar). The Katz bill would create a free market in water, letting farmers sell some water normally used for crops to cities when the cities need it. For a variety of arcane, legal reasons, they cannot do that now.

Until recently, nobody in Sacramento gave the Katz bill much of a chance because it was opposed by some key agricultural interests. But it emerged from the Assembly unscathed and now begins the process of working its way through the upper house, where it has an important co-sponsor, Senate President David A. Roberti (D-Los Angeles). That should be enough to maintain the momentum to get AB 2090 to Gov. Pete Wilson for signature.

There was a time when the conventional political wisdom in Sacramento decreed that the laws governing the obscure but fundamentally important water business would never change.

Reform seemed as unlikely as, say, a July rainstorm in Los Angeles. Not any more--and that’s good.