A Water War Is Brewing in the Legislature

A big water deal went down last week for Southern California. It was historic and unprecedented and maybe some other superlatives. Ignoring all the jargon and spin, this is what happened:

San Diego city folks wanted to buy surplus water from Imperial Valley farmers. They agreed on a price. But the only way to deliver the purchase was through an aqueduct owned by the Metropolitan Water District. San Diego and the MWD couldn’t agree on a delivery price. So they “compromised.” They agreed to hit up everybody else in California for money to make the deal work.

That’s right. Some truck driver in Fresno, a teacher in San Jose and a grocer in Redding will be asked to kick in so rich farmers around El Centro can peddle water to San Diego developers.

This isn’t the way the deal is being sold to the public by its powerful promoters, including Gov. Pete Wilson, the former mayor of San Diego. Nor is it actually the way the deal is structured. But it’s the bottom line.

You need to know that--and the promoters should be honest about it--in order to decide whether this, indeed, is something everybody really ought to help pay for.

And it may well be.

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This is how the deal was structured at the suggestion of the Wilson administration in hopes it would go down easy with the public:

State bond money will be used to line the All-American and Coachella canals with concrete--now they’re dirt--and install underground storage facilities. The $235-million cost, not coincidentally, is the same amount that separated the MWD and the San Diego County Water Authority in their bitter negotiations. It would have been politically unrealistic to give money to the MWD to help pay for the water delivery. Instead, the state offered to finance future MWD conservation projects.

So right off, this is a good deal for Southern California.

* MWD ratepayers--16-million people in 27 water agencies--are spared $235 million in conservation costs.

* Water will be used more efficiently in the Imperial Valley, and not just because of the 100,000 acre-feet saved annually by the new conservation projects. The 200,000 acre-feet San Diego will buy from the Imperial Irrigation District is water that farmers must save through conservation while still growing crops. They’ll turn a 10% profit on what they invest in conservation, according to IID General Manager Michael Clinton. They’ll become water ranchers.

* San Diego is guaranteed a steady stream of water. “We got a wake-up call during the drought,” notes Christine Frahm, the water authority chairwoman. The MWD, San Diego’s lone supplier, had threatened to cut its supply in half.

OK, but what about people living north of the Tehachapi? What’s in it for them? Here, the explanation gets abstract and fuzzy. It boils down to We’re all one big family. Help one, help all. Specifically:

* There’ll be less Southland demand for northern water. But says one skeptic, state Sen. Mike Thompson (D-St. Helena), “I think they have an insatiable thirst for water.”

* This will show the impatient feds that California is trying to live within its legal entitlement to 4.4-million acre-feet per year from the Colorado River. California has been drawing 5.2 million and is being threatened with cutbacks. The San Diego deal is part of a state plan to take less water from the Colorado.

* The deal may point the way toward further big transfers of water from farms to cities.

“No one will prosper or triumph through water wars,” Wilson asserts. “We will make progress together or none at all.”

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Well, there’ll certainly be a war in the Legislature over whether to insert this $235-million deal-maker into a $1.5-billion water bond being proposed for the November ballot. Also to be financed by that bond are delta environmental restoration, flood control and many local projects. The deadline to put the measure on the ballot is only 10 days off.

The deal has powerful allies, including Assembly Speaker Antonio Villaraigosa (D-Los Angeles), two sharp lawmakers who led final negotiations--Sen. Steve Peace (D-El Cajon) and Assemblyman Bob Hertzberg (D-Sherman Oaks)--and the water committee chairmen, Sen. Jim Costa (D-Fresno) and Assemblyman Michael Machado (D-Linden).

But already 21 unconvinced legislators have sent their leaders a letter questioning the deal. “Without details to ensure that [state] funding is only used to line canals, how can we be sure the money is not being used to line pockets instead?” they asked.

Indeed, we’ll need to know more. That means straight talk, not spin. For starters, let’s call the state money what it is: a subsidy--a word (and policy) long accepted in water development.