Washington Sinks Key Anti-Drought Bill : WATER WATCH: But tide is running toward reform

Silver linings are rare in the best of clouds these days, let alone the cloud of drought that hangs over California.

But one turned up Monday showing that a healthy majority of the U.S. House of Representatives favors new federal water policies. That could be the best news for Californians in five--perhaps going on six--dry years. The House showed its colors with 245 votes for a bill, sponsored by Rep. George Miller (D-Martinez), to block any more 40-year contracts to sell cheap federal water to Central Valley farmers. The bill died on a technicality.

The three-year ban would have allowed plenty of time for Congress to act on other water policy reforms, headed by a longer-range bill by Sen. Bill Bradley (D-N.J.) to hand over allocation of 7 million acre-feet of federal water to California. Bradley’s bill would allow buying and selling of at least some of the water delivered by the federal Central Valley Project on an open market. Bradley would, in essence, transfer from federal to state law decisions on allocating water that flows through federal dams and canals.

Although state law itself needs to be expanded, Gov. Pete Wilson used what he had last January to put the state in the business of buying water in areas of surplus and selling it to parched customers elsewhere to help them through the summer.

Miller says his bill to block contract renewals will be back next January, counting on its majority to come back, too. And the Bradley bill, now stalled in committee by opposition from agriculture and Sen. John Seymour (R-Calif.), will also be back.

Miller, chairman of the House Interior Committee, apparently lost some votes by quietly attaching his ban on contract renewals to a drought bill supported by Seymour that would give federal officials powers to transfer water supplies only during a drought emergency.

Miller’s bill is important because the Interior Department is renewing contracts for subsidized irrigation water as though the state were in no danger of a sixth year of drought. Every renewed contract siphons water out of the pool that Bradley would release to the open market.

Existing law limits the use of federal water largely to irrigation, regardless of demand for the crops in question. It also requires that water distributed by federal canals be used only in the San Joaquin valley.

Miller, Bradley and others argue that in the absence of major new dam and reservoir projects, allowing the free sale of water to willing buyers is the best way to prevent waste and ensure adequate supplies for everyone in California.

Studies show that cities would buy only a small fraction of water that now goes to farms. Most of that is water now used to irrigate uneconomical crops or crops grown on land so polluted it should be taken out of production.

Meanwhile, Seymour stayed with his view Monday that federal water law is fine the way it is. He opposes the Bradley bill on the curious grounds that it is federal interference with state water supply. Federal and state water both come from the Sacramento Delta; the distinction south of there is man-made.

With a very dry seven weeks of a new rainy season already behind us, California needs its politicians pointed as clearly in the right direction on water policy as Bradley is. Its very future depends on keeping elementary facts of nature straight.