All of State’s Water Users Can Coexist

When asked what a newcomer should know about California, noted western writer Wallace Stegner answered: “Water. It’s about water.”

Specifically, it is about a massive plumbing system that moves large amounts of water from Northern California into the Central Valley and down to Southern California. Along the way, the transported water feeds California’s $24-billion agricultural industry and serves up drinking water to 22 million Californians--almost two-thirds of the state’s population.

It’s also about restoring the watersheds that have borne the effects of water manipulations that were undertaken in a different era, an era that paid little regard to the impact that damming, depleting or diverting rivers and streams would have on downstream water quality, fish and wildlife resources and other environmental values.

Hence the conflict that has characterized California’s recent water wars: water for farms and people versus water for the environment. One side’s gain was another side’s loss; perfect fodder for “the sky is falling” crowd. Add to the mix California’s projections for continued growth, and you have a recipe for a pitched battle full of rhetoric.

Gov. Gray Davis and U.S. Secretary of Interior Bruce Babbitt soon will sign a legal document that begins implementation of a long-term state-federal plan for providing water security to meet California’s growing needs while committing to restore the damaged ecosystem and ensuring that the environmental mistakes of the past are not repeated when investing in California’s water future.

The so-called “CalFed” plan forthrightly recognizes that a more reliable and better quality water supply is needed for many of California’s cities and farms. Rather than assume that these goals must come at the expense of the environment, however, the plan recognizes that the environment has water needs too. It establishes a healthy “environmental water account” that will give natural resource managers the wherewithal to manage water supplies as though they were water users. “Environmental” water can be stored and managed in a way so that it can be delivered to streams and rivers when it is most needed, thereby helping to build conflict out of the system.

The plan also calls for a multibillion-dollar investment in environmental restoration, water quality improvements and environmentally friendly surface and ground-water storage projects. With a strong nod to the marketplace, the CalFed plan also seeks to encourage the marketing of water so that supply and demand can be better matched, thereby providing new tools to bring water to where Californians need it most.

This is big. This is new. It is a plan that reflects the best thinking of the entire water community--agricultural and urban water users and the environmental community--prodded (often reluctantly) toward consensus by Secretary Babbitt and California’s water leaders, Gov. Davis and U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein. Next stop: The California Legislature and the U.S. Congress to secure long-term funding.