In a dry time, plans for water projects flow

Acknowledging the specter of drought, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger appealed Monday for a $6-billion investment in water works, while the Democratic leader of the state Senate called for a $5-billion water bond measure on next year’s ballot.

The maneuverings by the two politicians virtually ensure that voters will be asked next year to approve billions of dollars in spending for water projects -- including, perhaps, two new dams and a canal to siphon the Sacramento River.

Cutbacks are inevitable next year if rain and snow don’t fall abundantly this winter, and the dueling announcements by Schwarzenegger and Senate President Pro Tem Don Perata (D-Oakland) kick off what are expected to be several months of wrangling to shape ballot proposals.

The call for more spending comes as lawmakers and bureaucrats weigh how to spend $10 billion from previous water bonds.

Standing before a wind-swept, largely depleted Central Valley reservoir, Schwarzenegger said a second dry winter “will be catastrophic. It will be a disaster.”

“We must get our act together now,” he said. “We have to build.”

The governor touted his $6-billion plan to build two reservoirs and boost groundwater storage, rework the plumbing of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, restore rivers and bolster conservation.

Schwarzenegger said his administration “loves conservation.” He called it something that “we always have to do,” and added that he limits his children to five-minute showers. But conservation alone, he said, will not stretch the state’s water supplies enough to match the growth that is expected to add 24 million Californians in the next four decades.

California’s audacious water system moves Sierra and Cascade snowmelt hundreds of miles by pump and aqueduct, with the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta at its heart.

Though local water districts have recently built their own dams, the state and federal governments have not significantly expanded their projects in decades. In the meantime, government protection of endangered delta fish and other environmental concerns have crimped deliveries from those major water projects.

Water in arid California engenders bitter politics; depending on the battle, farmers, environmentalists and city water districts may be allies or foes. Recent governors have tended to avoid water policy as thankless, even dangerous terrain.

Schwarzenegger spoke at the San Luis Reservoir near Los Banos, the hub of those federal and state projects. The sun-baked reservoir stores water pumped from the delta for delivery to hundreds of thousands of acres of cropland and 25 million people.

The reservoir now holds only a third of its average storage for July, because of a dry winter and the nine-day shutdown of the delta pumps in May to protect endangered fish.

As Schwarzenegger spoke, Perata released his plan for a $5-billion bond measure that would give money to regions in the state to solve their own problems. He criticized the governor’s proposal as a “top-down solution to a bottom-up problem.”

Unlike Schwarzenegger’s bond plan, Perata’s proposal would not dictate new dams, instead allowing regions to determine the best way to boost supplies. He said his plan would deliver cheaper, quicker fixes “rather than reliving the water wars of the past over false choices like dams and canals.”

Schwarzenegger’s proposal would invest $2.5 billion of taxpayer money in two reservoirs and require those who use the additional water to pay an additional $2 billion.

Schwarzenegger has called for construction of a dam and reservoir 77 miles northwest of Sacramento, and a dam above Millerton Lake on the San Joaquin River north of Fresno. For two years, Republican lawmakers have unsuccessfully pursued bonds to pay for those dams.

Barry Nelson, a senior policy analyst with the Natural Resources Defense Council, said farmers could never afford to pay for the dams, and urban water agencies, which have a much greater ability to raise revenue, have cheaper ways to stretch supplies.

“Nobody is interested in paying for these facilities, and it strikes us as really inappropriate to ask the taxpayers to pay for facilities that have not proven themselves,” Nelson said.

Randy McFarland, spokesman for the Friant Water Authority, which represents 15,000 farmers, said another dam on the San Joaquin River could catch Sierra Nevada runoff with no harm to the river downstream, improve water quality and provide flood protection.

But the group hasn’t examined sharing the cost of building the dam, he said.

The Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, which serves 18 million people from Ventura County to San Diego, hasn’t studied either dam project in detail, Assistant General Manager Roger Patterson said.

What MWD most needs, he said, is a more reliable supply of water from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta.

“Our priority has been to focus on the delta,” he said.

Under their water proposals, Schwarzenegger and Perata would put $1 billion into what they call delta “conveyance,” a catch-all term for various proposals to move water more efficiently and with less harm through the delta.

A maze of channels and reclaimed islands between Sacramento and Tracy, the delta is a source of water for two of three Californians and wellspring for the state’s $32-billion agricultural industry.

But the pumps that divert water before it can flow to the Pacific Ocean are vulnerable to regulatory shutdown to protect endangered salmon and smelt, and the earthen levees that channel water are threatened by earthquakes, floods and rising sea levels.

Environmentalists helped defeat a 43-mile “peripheral” canal proposal in 1982, saying that it would allow Southern California to divert an ecologically devastating amount of water from the estuary.

Since then, many scientists and some environmentalists have argued that a canal actually might help fish by isolating them from the powerful effects of the pumps.

Still, any discussion of a delta fix faces close scrutiny by myriad antagonistic interests.

Last year, Schwarzenegger named a blue-ribbon panel to study the best way to protect the delta as a water source and wildlife corridor. The panel’s recommendations are due in November. Schwarzenegger has espoused a peripheral canal in recent speeches. But his proposed bond measure, like Perata’s, would incorporate whatever recommendation comes from the blue-ribbon panel.

In touting his plan, Schwarzenegger said California leaders could no longer procrastinate on building reservoirs and fixing the delta.

“I was sent to Sacramento to create some action and to get us moving again,” he said, “and to make progress on issues that have been swept under the rug for too long.”

But some observers say that whether the governor and Legislature succeed in negotiating a bond measure for next year’s ballot may depend on a higher power: next winter’s precipitation.

“As a general rule in California, we don’t solve problems until there’s a crisis,” said UC Berkeley political scientist Bruce Cain. “The crisis is what forces people to abandon the status quo.”

nancy.vogel@latimes.com

Times staff writer Patrick McGreevy contributed to this report.

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Trouble on tap

Some of the water challenges facing the state:

* Federal and state water projects have not added a new reservoir in 20 years.

* The state is projected to grow from 36 million to 60 million people by 2050.

* Water districts throughout the state are asking people to cut

usage by 10%.

* Another dry winter would be “catastrophic” for California.

* The delta at the hub of the water system is vulnerable to earthquakes and rising sea levels.

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(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

Coming water crisis?

The rain season that ended in 2006 was unusually wet, leaving most of California’s major reservoirs well-filled. But the rain season that just ended June 30 was extremely dry in most of the state, raising concerns about future water supplies.

Water levels in major California reservoirs

Most of the water supply for Southern California comes from elsewhere in California and the West via the California Aqueduct, the Los Angeles Aqueduct and the Colorado River Aqueduct.

[Please see microfilm for full map information.]

The chart below compares the precipitation of the 2007 rain season to annual averages during the statewide droughts of 1976-77 and 1987-92 and the Southern California drought of 1998-2002 (in inches).

*--* City 2007 Normal 1976-77 1987-92 1998-02 Eureka 36.5 39.6 25.6 28.2 37.5 Redding 22.7 37.0 21.9 27.6 31.0 San Francisco 11.7 20.3 9.4 13.7 18.3 Sacramento 12.2 18.2 7.4 15.7 18.4 Fresno 6.1 11.0 7.9 9.4 9.4 Santa Barbara 7.2 16.3 11.9 12.4 17.5 Bakersfield 3.1 6.2 4.3 5.2 5.4 Long Beach 2.1 12.1 6.9 8.7 7.0 Los Angeles 3.2 14.9 9.8 11.3 10.8 San Diego 3.8 10.2 8.6 10.2 6.0 Riverside 1.7 10.1 8.3 8.4 5.4 Redlands 3.9 13.4 11.1 11.5 7.4 Death Valley 1.8 2.3 3.1 2.2 1.4

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Colorado River

Sources: California Dept. of Water Resources, National Drought Mitigation Center

Leslie Carlson Los Angeles Times