Senate OKs Bill on Water Conservation

The state Senate voted Thursday to order the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California to slacken its thirst for imported water and switch its emphasis to water conservation.

Under the bill by Sen. Tom Hayden (D-Los Angeles), the MWD would stress conservation and recycling as alternatives to developing new sources of water, such as dams, reservoirs and canals.

The bill was sent to the Assembly on a bipartisan 27-4 vote of northern and southern, urban and rural senators, a relatively rare accomplishment in a Legislature that has been fighting over water since the Gold Rush.

The sprawling water district is California’s largest and draws most of its water from Northern California and the Colorado River. It sells and distributes water to 16 million people, including residents of Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino, San Diego and Ventura counties.

To overcome objections that had threatened to scuttle the bill, Hayden agreed Thursday to make major amendments later in the Assembly that would soften the proposal.

Hayden said he will strike a requirement that the MWD make water conservation, recycling and other alternative supply programs its “first priority’ in operating the vast system.

As the No. 1 priority, this would have moved conservation ahead of future water development projects that would transport additional flows from the watersheds of Northern California, potentially including a peripheral canal around the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta.

Hayden, one of the Legislature’s leading conservationists, sought to assure critics that his bill was not an anti-growth, anti-development scheme.

Hayden said he would amend the bill (SB 1875) to “put in something along the lines of increased use of conservation” to replace the “first priority” language. He said that opponents, including the MWD, “should be able to live with that.”