Water District Change Overdue

As scientists warn of coming drought, the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California stands at a crossroad. It is the major provider of water for the region’s 17 million residents, and legislative critics are now assailing the district’s reluctance to adapt to a new era of water supply and distribution. The giant public agency is saddled with a governing structure created by the Legislature in 1928 and little changed since, a Tyrannosaurus stranded in the desert.

The issue peaked last Wednesday when Chairman Jim Costa (D-Fresno) of the Senate Water Committee declared that the only solution of the MWD issue was for the Legislature to “change the nature of the organization.”

Metropolitan has fielded a legion of high-paid lobbyists to fight off legislative action, but it is surely due for change after seven decades as the undisputed, unyielding power of California water. Experts believe that adequate water supplies depend on developing a competitive water market in which farm areas with surplus water sell to growing cities. The MWD claims to favor such a competitive market, but in practice it has sought to block transfers it did not control.

The MWD needs to open its governing structure to greater public participation, although one proposal for a directly elected 13-member board does not seem practical. The district now is run by a 51-person board appointed by its own member agencies. Some call the board members “the water buffaloes,” perhaps because they seem to operate by herd instinct. Voting power is tied to historical property tax rolls and not to population or need.

MWD General Manager Ron Gastelum has struggled in his first year on the job to reorganize the way the super-agency operates and wholesales water to its 27 members, including the city of Los Angeles and San Diego County. He told the Senate Water Committee last Wednesday that change is coming from within and legislative action is not needed. However, Gastelum’s presentation withered when General Manager Maureen A. Stapleton of the San Diego County Water Authority buried the witness table in reams of unfulfilled MWD planning documents from the past 15 years. “They are asking us to ignore history,” said Stapleton, whose agency buys the most water from the MWD yet faces the biggest cuts in supply in times of drought.

The Senate and Assembly water committees kept the pressure on by calling for workshops to consider MWD restructuring. The Senate also moved ahead on bills that would eliminate the old property tax formula and end the MWD’s ability to arbitrarily set rates for use of its aqueducts.

As Wednesday’s hearing ended, lawmakers seemed frustrated by the difficulty of reaching consensus on complex water issues. Gastelum summed it up as “all about money” and who will pay how much to get the water and pipe it through the system. Sen. Steve Peace (D-San Diego) corrected him: “It isn’t just about money. It’s about power and security.”

Peace is right. This is a power game that must be settled quickly or the water security of the entire state may be jeopardized. Unless the MWD changes dramatically and soon, the Legislature will have to do the job.