U.S. Panel Backs Plan to Rescue Troubled Watershed

A key Senate committee voted Wednesday to renew an ambitious program to rescue the imperiled Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, the state’s major watershed.

“I’m a happy camper,” Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) said after the Energy and Natural Resources Committee voted 18 to 5 to reauthorize the CalFed program for three years and to provide an additional $1.6 billion for projects meant to preserve wildlife, improve water quality and decrease pollution and silting.

Last year a similar bill by Feinstein stalled in committee amid disputes between farmers and environmentalists as well as some partisan wrangling between Republicans and Democrats.

Some of the disputes have been ironed out by extensive negotiations between what are called “stakeholders” in the state’s water future. The delta provides water for 22 million people and tens of thousands of acres of farmland.

Supporters of the CalFed effort had worried that failure of Feinstein’s bill would jeopardize an unprecedented agreement among state and federal officials, farmers, environmentalists and urban interests to work together toward an equitable distribution of delta water.

Pending in the House is a CalFed reauthorization bill drafted by Rep. Ken Calvert (R-Corona). There are differences between his bill and the Senate version, but Calvert said he was heartened by the committee’s endorsement of the Feinstein legislation.

“We have no shortage of water crises [in California], just a shortage of water,” he said.

“There’s a lot of mountain left to climb but we reached an important plateau today,” said Tim Quinn, an official of the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California.

California officials have lobbied hard for passage of the CalFed measure, saying it is critical to ensuring that the state has enough water to satisfy a growing population and compensate for cutbacks from the Colorado River.

In a plaintive letter to Senate leaders, Gov. Gray Davis noted that California has provided more than $1 billion for the latest phase of CalFed. “However, the absence of a federal authorization threatens to undermine the continued progress of this vital program,” he wrote.

Feinstein, who co-wrote the bill with Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), reduced the cost of the legislation by a third, from $2.4 billion, to overcome objections from committee Republicans.

Feinstein also reduced the duration of the bill from five years to three. The change means CalFed would require another congressional vote of approval sooner, in 2005 rather than in 2007.

Several Republicans noted that the changes also would increase the annual federal contribution to CalFed from $480 million to $530 million. “That’s an actual annual increase, not a reduction,” Sen. Larry Craig (R-Idaho) said.

Craig was one of six Republicans to vote for the legislation because it includes money to study expansion and construction of water-storage projects, which are among the most contentious and costly issues in CalFed.

“California can’t solve its water problems unless it ... is able to take water from wet years and store it off-stream for dry years. I think it’s inescapable,” Feinstein said.

Environmentalists argue that the cost of new reservoirs would be prohibitive. Critics of new storage projects would rather spend the money on a broad range of conservation programs and promote water transfers between regions of the state.

The full Senate is not expected to consider the legislation before late summer. Similar legislation is pending in the House of Representatives.

Sen. Pete Domenici (R-N.M.) said he plans to try to broaden Feinstein’s bill by including water projects elsewhere in the West.

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Associated Press contributed to this report.