Water Bond Aimed at Diverse Programs

By NANCY VOGEL

Oct. 7, 2002 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

SACRAMENTO —

Before casting a vote on the $3.4-billion water bond issue on the November ballot, a reasonable voter might ask what California got for the three other water bonds passed in the last six years.

The answer isn’t simple. The past bond sales didn’t buy a big new dam or reservoir to carry the state safely through drought.

Instead, like cash hurled from a helicopter, the money has landed in hundreds of scattered projects, including no-flush urinals in Pasadena schools, $500 vouchers for coin-laundry owners in San Diego and the planting of native willows along the San Joaquin River.

Proposition 50 promises to be more of the same. Unusual in that it was written by a small group of environmentalists, not hammered out in the Legislature, the measure has nonetheless won the support of much of the state’s water industry. Backers call it a necessary mortgage payment on a more drought-resistant, safe and environmentally healthy water system.

Opponents, including the California Farm Bureau Federation and the California Taxpayers’ Assn., say the latest bond measure once again has plenty of money for preserving land, but not enough for developing new sources of water.

A September poll by the nonprofit Field Institute showed likely voters were almost evenly divided on the measure. But television advertising in support of the bond issue hasn’t begun, and the Yes on 50 campaign has the generous support of a handful of developers who stand to benefit from $950 million in bond sales earmarked for purchase and restoration of coastal wetlands.

Donors to a political committee established by the measure’s chief backer, the Planning and Conservation League, include the owners of land at such preservation battlegrounds as the Bolsa Chica wetlands in Orange County, the Ballona wetlands in West Los Angeles and the Cargill Inc. salt ponds along San Francisco Bay.

Ending Epic Struggles

For example, Playa Capital Co., builder of a 1,087-acre development near the Ballona wetlands, has donated $830,000 this year to the Planning and Conservation League’s Conservation Action Fund. Signal Landmark, which is trying to build houses on the Bolsa Chica mesa, gave $200,000.

Other developers have donated to a separate political committee run by the Trust for Public Land, which helped pay to qualify Proposition 50 for the November ballot. One $25,000 donation came from land speculator Brian A. Sweeney, who seeks to build mansions on a rugged parcel north of Malibu coveted for preservation by the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy.

Joe Caves, the league attorney who helped write the measure, said the aim is to end several epic struggles over development along California’s coast.

“The bulldozers are moving at Ballona, and the question is, can we come up with a resolution ... so that we have, at the end of the day, a chance to have a large, functioning, coastal wetland in Los Angeles,” said Caves. “That’s key to the long-term environmental health of the Santa Monica Bay, and if they put apartment buildings all over it, that opportunity’s lost.”

Environmental Focus

The bond measure, Caves said, targets land for its ecological value, not to win political donations from developers.

“Nobody has a guaranteed acquisition, nobody has a guaranteed price,” he said, noting that any land bought with bond money must go through government review and appraisals.

A good share of the bonds--$1.5 billion--is dedicated to local and state agencies for desalinating ocean water, removing contaminants such as perchlorate, upgrading water treatment plants, preventing pollution and improving security at water structures.

If past water bond sales are a guide, the money would be disbursed through competitive grants to hundreds of projects such as drilling wells in North Hollywood, retrofitting machines for developing X-ray film so they use less water and installing temporary, inflatable dams on the San Gabriel River to skim off water to be stored underground.

Though there’s no guarantee that voters will pass the measure, the Legislature and governor are counting on it.

On the last day of the legislative session, lawmakers dipped into Proposition 50’s hypothetical money. They passed a law, signed by Gov. Gray Davis last month, that earmarks $150 million to help pay for a transfer of water from the Imperial Irrigation District to San Diego. That transfer is critical to helping the state meet a federal deadline to reduce its Colorado River consumption.

The governor has yet to take a position on the measure. But he signed a bill that dedicates $50 million of the bond money to the Salton Sea, which could become too salty to sustain fish if too much water is transferred from the Imperial Valley.

CalFed’s Future

A big chunk of Proposition 50--$825 million--would keep alive the CalFed Bay-Delta Program, an ambitious, many-tentacled effort started by former Gov. Pete Wilson and U.S. Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt in 1994.

They created CalFed to make peace among farmers, environmentalists and city water districts. Its aim is to restore the endangered salmon runs and native fish of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta and also to make it a more reliable source of water for Southern California.

CalFed has charted its 30-year course and spent $1.5 billion in state money in the last three years. But its mantra--”We all get better together”--has rung hollow lately with agribusiness, which uses roughly 80% of California’s water and seeks a bigger, faster investment in new reservoirs.

Many water industry officials say that if voters reject Proposition 50, CalFed’s funding will dry up. They warn that the state will plunge back into the combative days of the early 1990s, when interest groups clashed repeatedly over the shipment of Northern California water to the South Coast and San Joaquin Valley.

“We go back to the days of gridlock,” said CalFed Executive Director Patrick Wright, “where we potentially have a fight every year over water project operations.”

Without another infusion of cash from Proposition 50 or the federal government--and a big appropriation this year from Congress is a long shot--restoration of rivers would also halt, Wright said.

In the last several years, the decline of chinook salmon, delta smelt and splittail has reversed, and CalFed has breached small dams and screened pumps in several streams.

“To keep the program going,” Wright said, “we will need a significant new infusion of funds either from a new bond or from new federal funding.”

In the last six years, only public schools have won more bond money from California voters than water projects.

In November 1996, voters passed Proposition 204, a $995-million water bond issue. Three-quarters of that money had been spent as of July.

In March 2000, voters passed Proposition 13, the $2.1-billion Safe Drinking Water, Clean Water, Watershed Protection and Flood Protection Bond Act. Of that, $751 million remains.

Bubbling Streams

And just last March, voters approved a $2.6-billion bond measure, Proposition 40. Television ads for the bond issue showed images of bubbling Sierra streams, but most of the money is dedicated to urban and state parks and the purchase of wildlife habitat.

Those measures were drafted by lawmakers and negotiated in the Legislature. Proposition 50, however, was largely written by three environmentalists: Caves, the Planning and Conservation League attorney; Leslie Friedman Johnson, a lobbyist for the Nature Conservancy; and Barry Nelson, senior policy analyst with the Natural Resources Defense Council in San Francisco.

“They did a pretty good job of targeting some very distinct needs,” said Steve Hall, executive director of the Assn. of California Water Agencies, which has endorsed the bond issue.

Many water districts, especially those serving farmers, are frustrated that no new permanent dam or reservoir has come from the previous three water bond sales.

“What we keep seeing in water bonds is not development of water for the population,” said Tess Dunham, the state Farm Bureau’s water resources director, “but continual acquisition of land and, of course, most of that comes from agriculture.”

Some bond money has been used to study five places in Northern California where a reservoir might be built or expanded, with planning documents to be finished in 2004. And millions of dollars have been invested to boost supplies in such places as Kern County by capturing flood flows and percolating it underground to be stored for a drier day.

“The fact of the matter is, we’re not ready to build surface storage yet,” Hall said. “People who believe we could have got to a surface reservoir today don’t understand what it takes to get there.”

To appease those eager for new reservoirs, the bond measure authors sent a letter in August to state Sen. Mike Machado (D-Linden), chairman of the Yes on Prop. 50 campaign, promising to help sponsor yet another water bond measure in 2004. It would focus on development of bigger water supplies--including new reservoirs.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

Voters OKd 12 Bonds Since 1996

There have been 14 bonds on statewide ballots since 1996. The 12 bond measures approved total $23 billion.

Generally, bonds are paid off over 30 years and interest payments cost taxpayers roughly $1.25 for every dollar borrowed.

Here is a list of those measures, with the percentage of the vote they carried.

Some measures required more than 50% of the vote for approval.

March 1996

Seismic retrofit, Prop. 192, $2 billion, passed, 59%

Public education, Prop. 203, $3 billion, passed, 62%

November 1996

Water quality and supply, Prop. 204, $995 million, passed, 63%

Jail construction and improvement, Prop. 205, $700 million, failed, 59%