Wanted: a New Water Regimen

Nothing in California is more encrusted in tradition and dogma than the state’s water supply system. That’s why the old pros who run the giant farm and urban water districts are called “water buffaloes” with a mixture of awe and derision. But now it’s time to break the last bonds of water-buffalo mind-set and develop a new California water regimen. The opportunity is here as state and federal officials approach critical decisions involving two major sources of Southern California’s water, the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta and the Colorado River.

In fact, says Secretary of the Interior Bruce Babbitt, this may be “the last opportunity we ever have” to restore the degraded delta environment and build a rational, reliable hub of water distribution. The issue is so important that Babbitt is spending weeks in the state to resolve two major problems: restructuring the delta and getting Southern California water agencies to stop overdrawing their legal allocation of Colorado River water.

State and federal officials will make key decisions within weeks in the years-long Cal-Fed process of restoring the environment of the delta, stabilizing water supplies pumped south to the Central Valley and Southern California and ensuring that the water meets tough new quality standards.

Babbitt also is attempting to conclude a historic water deal between the Imperial Irrigation District and San Diego. That’s the keystone to bringing California’s draw on the Colorado River to within its legal quota of 4.4 million acre-feet a year. The last big snag is a bitter dispute between Imperial and the Coachella Valley Irrigation District over how to divvy up the 3.85 million acre-feet of Colorado River water that goes to agriculture.

In the delta talks, farmers--who consume more than 80% of the water--insist on new taxpayer-financed dams and reservoirs to augment their supplies. But it’s premature to start building more reservoirs. The Cal-Fed managers must first seek less costly and more efficient ways to improve supply, through conservation, through reclamation of waste water, by developing a more open water market for cities to buy farm water and through storage in ground-water basins.

Farmers fight ground-water storage out of fear it will infringe on their right to pump water from beneath their lands. But the aquifers are chronically overdrawn, and the time has come for formal ground-water management.

Enormous economic stakes are involved, and somehow losers--if there are losers--will have to be compensated. But the 19th century water ways don’t work in a state with 33 million residents, expected to grow to nearly 50 million by 2020. With Bruce Babbitt’s help and the cooperation of outgoing and incoming governors, we must chart a new water course to the future.