Course of Water Policy Muddied by Wilson Aides

It was the kind of faux pas that gives a bureaucrat nightmares--a few politically indiscreet words spoken in utter confidence that suddenly become very public.

Water Resources Department Director David Kennedy, often thought by fellow bureaucrats to be “too trusting,” was meeting behind closed doors in Washington with some senators and their staffs to discuss California’s long-running water problems.

When asked how much more water should be set aside for endangered fish and wildlife, Kennedy opined that the problems of fish and wildlife could be alleviated by building a Peripheral Canal-type facility around the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta.

It was Kennedy’s bad luck that among those listening to his comments was Sen. Bill Bradley (D-N.J.), a politically astute Easterner who, for reasons still unfathomable to some water officials, has immersed himself in California’s brutal water wars.

Later, Bradley repeated what he had heard to editors of the San Francisco Chronicle. And the Chronicle turned it into a front page story headlined: “Water Chief Revives Talk of Peripheral Canal.”

In a state where farmers, cities and the environment are vying for a bigger share of a scarce resource, no two words are more politically explosive than Peripheral Canal.

For more than 30 years it has been the dream of water engineers to construct a 42-mile canal that would skirt the periphery of the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta and deliver water directly from the Sacramento River to pumps feeding the southbound California Aqueduct.

Initially, the idea of the Peripheral Canal came from state biologists who believed that it would protect young fish from being sucked into pumps at the southern end of the delta and prevent the “reverse flow” of rivers that has substantially harmed ocean-going salmon and striped bass.

But when the voters were asked to approve the canal in 1982, it was environmentalists who helped influence the heavy negative vote from Northern California that defeated the idea. They argued that a canal would only be used to funnel more water from the north to Southern California and further deplete supplies available to the environment.

Kennedy’s remarks not only raised questions about the real intentions of the Wilson Administration, which has been on record as opposing the Peripheral Canal, but also about who is really defining water policy for the state of California.

Publicly, Resources Secretary Douglas Wheeler has always spoken for the Administration on water issues and in doing so had reiterated its opposition to a Peripheral Canal.

But water officials said what Kennedy’s remarks really revealed was a wide split within the Administration between Kennedy and Wheeler over what course the state will take as it attempts to balance the water needs of farms, cities and the environment.

They said Kennedy, an engineer and former assistant general manager of the Metropolitan Water District, has pushed hard for the construction of new facilities to capture more water for farms and the state’s fast-growing cities. Kennedy has said he did not mean it to appear that he was advocating the Peripheral Canal.

“Kennedy is finally telling the governor: ‘You’re not going to be able to duck the building thing,’ ” said one official. “You’ve got to fix the plumbing. You have to build facilities.”

On the other hand, they said Wheeler, a former Sierra Club official, played down the need for new facilities and urged a greater allocation of scarce water resources to the environment.

“There’s no question that they are not in sync. But trying to read the tea leaves as to who’s on top or who the governor is favoring or even how they are going about sorting through their differences is a mystery,” said Tom Graff, an Environmental Defense Fund attorney.

What seems apparent to all sides, however, is that the philosophical disagreements have played a major role in delaying the governor’s efforts to come forward with a long-term water policy.

The biggest stumbling block seems to have been Wheeler’s attempt to urge the governor to propose that the State Water Resources Control Board be authorized to set interim standards governing flows through the delta. Such standards are expected to require that more water be released to the environment for endangered fish and wildlife.

Kennedy was said to have opposed the proposal on the grounds that if more water is released to the environment, that would mean less for farms and cities that are suffering from the effects of a six-year drought.

Meanwhile, Gov. Wilson soon has to decide which of his two water chiefs wins the day.