MWD’s Agenda
“Bruised and embattled,” that is the way staff writer Tony Perry describes the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California (news analysis, Feb. 16). “Laughing all the way to the bank” would have been a more apt description. Last August, MWD and a phalanx of south state legislators rammed through a $235-million state taxpayer gift to MWD, premised on MWD’s willingness to negotiate a deal with its agricultural agency counterparts in diverting water from the Colorado River.
The money in hand, MWD now seeks to have the secretary of the Interior simply reallocate the agricultural agencies’ water to MWD. This is water that MWD told the Legislature, just six months ago, it would acquire by voluntary exchange. If MWD is bruised and embattled, it’s only because it can’t get its stories straight.
THOMAS J. GRAFF, Senior Attorney, Environmental Defense Fund, Oakland
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