NEWS ANALYSIS : Politics Once Again Dry Up Water Reform : Policy: When Gov. Wilson changed course on protecting the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, he was following his predecessors in sidestepping the issue.

Gov. Pete Wilson’s decision last week to drop his proposed temporary protections for the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta provides a startling reminder of how politically volatile--and perhaps insoluble--California’s complex water problems remain.

Wilson is the fourth consecutive governor to talk, in varying degrees, about addressing the state’s water quandary--and the fourth in 25 years to throw up his arms in despair. Not since former Gov. Edmund G. (Pat) Brown pushed through construction of the massive State Water Project in the early 1960s has a governor achieved a major victory in the water arena.

“The problem is no one really wants to compromise on these things,” said San Francisco author Marc Reisner, who has written extensively about the history of California water and is a longtime critic of water practices in the state. “Everyone wants it their way. I don’t see any movement toward consensus. When push comes to shove, everyone retreats to their bunker.”

By abruptly directing the State Water Resources Control Board on Thursday to shift its attention to long-term environmental protections in the delta--a process that will take several years to complete--the governor has effectively delayed any new state water initiative until after next year’s gubernatorial election.

In doing so, Wilson joins Ronald Reagan, Edmund G. (Jerry) Brown Jr. and George Deukmejian as governors who were unable to deliver on pledges to divvy up the state’s water in a way acceptable to cities, farmers and environmentalists. If Wilson seeks a second term and is reelected, he will get another chance, but the task will be no easier if the past is prologue.

“The minute they get to the tough decisions, they want to put it past their next election,” said Rep. George Miller (D-Martinez), a congressional leader on water issues whose political career spans the four governorships. “We’re now down to the tough decisions.”

Although the specifics of the squabbles have changed over the years, the fundamental water dilemma facing California’s political leadership has remained remarkably constant since the state’s environmental movement came of age in the 1970s.

Simply put, California’s growing cities need more water, its entrenched agricultural interests have been unwilling to give up any, and the increasingly powerful environmental lobby--as well as courts and the federal government--have demanded a greater share for fish and wildlife.

“It is a difficult issue to deal with,” said David Kennedy, Wilson’s director of the state Department of Water Resources; he also held the post under Deukmejian. “Pat Brown’s consensus (on building the State Water Project) was just 51% of the votes. . . . I remember people saying: ‘If only we had a drought (to force a crisis) we could get these problems solved,’ but that didn’t turn out to be right, now did it?”

The focus of the debate has historically turned to the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, a maze of islands and waterways at the mouth of the two rivers that has long been the weak link of California’s water delivery system. The delta receives rain and snow runoff from the Sierra and has become the source of two-thirds of the state’s drinking water and most irrigation water for Central Valley farms.

Since the 1960s, state officials have floated the idea of building a canal around the delta that would deliver water directly to state and federal pumps in the rolling hills southwest of Stockton. The Peripheral Canal would bypass the delicate delta ecosystem while providing a secure water supply to Central and Southern California.

Voters blocked the canal in 1982. During the Deukmejian years, the proposal was modified and became a through-delta channel--derisively known as Duke’s Ditch--and was never built.

The canal proposals have been dogged by shifting alliances and political jockeying, with all three major players in the delta controversy--cities, farms and environmentalists--at times supporting and at times opposing the plan of the day. In the end, no proposal has gotten beyond the drawing board.

In the meantime, the delta’s environmental condition worsened, with fish counts in decline and state and federal biologists insisting that the ecosystem is in deepening trouble. Finally, the federal government intervened by listing two fish species--the winter-run salmon and the delta smelt--as threatened under the Endangered Species Act, setting the stage for Wilson’s announcement last week.

Wilson blamed his decision to abandon the state board’s interim delta standards--known as Decision 1630--on the federal intervention, claiming that Washington had preempted California’s water policy by imposing restrictions on delta pumping to protect the threatened fish.

The federal requirements have provided new protections for the delta, but officials from the National Marine Fisheries Service and the U.S. Department of Fish and Game--which are charged with protecting the two threatened fish--say most of the requirements for this year were included in the interim standards.

“This is real political,” said Wayne White, field supervisor in Sacramento for the Department of Fish and Game. “They are trying to hang this on us, as I see it. . . . But we aren’t requiring anything more than what is in Decision 1630, except when there is extra water that would flow out of the delta anyway. It is out of the realm of biology at this point.”

Many environmentalists and others say Wilson’s motivation in backing away from the interim standards was a political one, having little or nothing to do with his water policy. Farmers throughout the Central Valley opposed the temporary protections as another threat to their water supplies. According to this theory, Wilson, with his eye on reelection, decided to forgo a costly battle over water and instead shore up his political base in the agricultural community.

“This allows him to avoid the more difficult problem of coming out with a plan of action that is going to work,” said author Robert Gottlieb, a critic of past water policy who teaches environmental policy at UCLA. “This isn’t a plan of action, this is calling your political chips.”

Carl Boronkay, who retired last week after a long stint as general manager of the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, said Wilson’s decision goes against the tide in water politics and will inevitably be reversed. Agriculture’s influence is waning, Boronkay said, and its victory in this struggle may be its swan song.

“This is kind of a rear-guard action,” Boronkay said. “You just can’t go on the way we have with these fishery problems.”

Such speculation angers Kennedy, the state Department of Water Resources director, who insists that Californians’ attention should be focused on federal efforts to control state water policy, not on Wilson’s political fortunes. Invoking the Endangered Species Act in the delta, he said, is the most significant development in the state’s water picture in years, but, he complained, “it is playing second fiddle to people’s perception of political intrigue.”

However, author Reisner and others say the state and Wilson are only getting their due for having allowed the delta problem to fester. The blame stretches back several administrations and crosses political parties but ultimately rests with the current leadership, they say.

“You can only stick your finger in the socket so long before you get jolted,” Reisner said.