Don’t Let Lesson Simply Fade Away : Bill addresses ever-present threat of drought

The California Assembly has an important opportunity this week to make a small but much-needed change in the state’s often haphazard planning process. It will be asked to take the first small step to make it harder for all of us to take water for granted. Given how precious water is in Southern California--the dry region where most of the state’s population lives--approving such an eminently sensible measure should be a no-brainer.

The Assembly Water Committee today will be asked to approve a bill by state Sen. Jim Costa (D-Fresno) that has already passed the upper house. SB 901 would require a local government seeking new development to first check with the local water agency to make sure the water to supply the new development is available.

Sounds simple enough, doesn’t it? Yet this has never been required of either developers or local governments. And nothing in California water law or politics is ever quite so simple as it sounds.

Powerful real estate developers, and some California counties, are leaning on Assembly members to kill Costa’s bill. They claim it would take the power to control development away from cities and counties and hand it to distant, faceless bureaucrats in water agencies.

It does nothing of the sort. All SB 901 requires is that cities and counties explain where they expect to get the water for any new development. It does not give water agencies veto power. It wouldn’t necessarily stop growth or suburban sprawl, as much as many Californians would like that to happen. The legislation simply asks those who want to promote additional growth to first make sure the water needed to sustain that growth is readily available.

California was fortunate to have record rain and snowfall this past winter. But it would be a mistake for anyone--especially anyone in the Legislature--to let those rains, or the heavy snowmelt we’ll see in our rivers and streams all spring and summer, wash away memories of this state’s seven-year drought.

Though not as economically harmful as the end of the Cold War and Congress’ cutbacks in military spending, the drought was a significant cause of California’s severe recession. As California’s population continues to grow, the Legislature must do all it can to assure a reliable water supply. Otherwise man-made drought could become a permanent condition not just in Southern California but even in such comparatively water-rich regions as the San Francisco Bay Area and the Sacramento Valley.

Californians must learn never to take water for granted, and this is as good a time as any to start putting the hard lessons of the drought to work. That is what SB 901 does. It deserves to become law.