Drought offers an opportunity to consider water policy

Written By kolimtiga on Senin, 20 Januari 2014 | 12.56

SACRAMENTO — So it's official: We are in a serious drought. That means this: Next comes serious flooding.

But we'll still be in a declared drought.

That's just the nature of California weather patterns — and water politics.

A drought proclamation, as issued by Gov. Jerry Brown on Friday, changes the political climate. It focuses public attention on the need for costly new waterworks.

Therefore governors and water officials are always reluctant to declare a drought over, even when rivers again leap their banks, fill reservoirs and send torrents of muddy snowmelt, uprooted trees and drowned livestock cascading into the Pacific.

That's when we'll curse ourselves for lack of foresight, for not having built the facilities to capture and store the floodwaters needed to get us through the next inevitable drought.

You can look it up: After virtually every severe drought there's devastating flooding.

That doesn't justify constructing just any waterworks. Brown's hugely expensive ($25 billion), monstrous twin-tunnel project planned for California's main water hole, the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, should be thoroughly reassessed.

The proposed 40-foot wide, 35-mile long tunnels would siphon off great volumes of Sacramento River water before it flows through the delta, robbing local farmers and fish and disfiguring one of California's most bucolic areas. There hasn't been enough serious thought to modernizing or relocating existing flawed facilities at the other end of the delta.

You also don't hear much discussion of whether certain crops in California — wine and weed, for example — are justified in such quantities, given the great amounts of precious water they soak up.

Don't we already have enough vineyards? And don't tell me I can't water my lawn when shady people in the hills are depleting the aquifers and poisoning the streams by growing pot. Then there's fracking.

Water conservation shouldn't be just for homeowners and renters — and hotel operators happy for any excuse not to provide clean towels.

But I'm meandering.

Brown's declaration of a drought emergency is aimed at expediting water transfers, reservoir releases, conservation and federal relief.

But it also may inspire the Legislature to finally rewrite a pork-laden, $11.1-billion water bond proposal it passed in 2009 and twice yanked from the statewide ballot, certain that voters wouldn't swallow it. The measure, it's felt, needs to be pared by nearly half to be accepted by voters.

But who knows? This drought could soften voters' attitudes about spending money for water. The key, I suspect, is not the size of the bond, but the content. Any new bond can't include fatback like the old one did, such lard as bike trails, open-space purchases and "watershed education centers."

Two legislators — Sen. Lois Wolk (D-Davis) and Assemblyman Anthony Rendon (D-Lakewood) — are pushing separate bond proposals, each priced at $6.5 billion. And both would require a tricky two-thirds legislative vote.

They would provide money for recycling, drinking-water treatment, storm-water management, groundwater cleanup, watershed protection and beefing up delta levees.

But there's little mention of dam-building. Rendon's proposal does include $1.5 billion for unspecified "storage." That presumably could be above or below ground.

For my money, we need more reservoir space to store the inevitable flood waters. Some central and northern lakes are currently at only 40% to 60% of average water levels for this time of year. But we certainly could use a couple more of those pools.


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