Bailing Out a Vital Water Compromise : Effort to weaken major state agreement must be blocked

There are times when the arcane workings of water policy, and water politics, must be carefully watched by the general public, not just the technical experts who normally deal with them. That’s happening now in Sacramento, where Gov. Pete Wilson and other state officials are wrestling with the difficult challenge of how to protect the Sacramento River Delta without hampering its crucial role--providing two-thirds of this state’s fresh water. The delta is pivotal to the state’s water system because two major rivers, the Sacramento and the San Joaquin, drain through its levees to San Francisco Bay. Also, Northern California water is pumped through the delta to cities and farms in the central and southern parts of the state. Over the years that pumping activity has had an adverse effect on both water quality and wildlife in the delta. Efforts to mitigate the environmental side effects have been under way since at least 1978.

Last December, the State Water Quality Control Board came up with new water allocation rules that will increase the amount of fresh water in the delta by about 10% in an effort to halt some of the environmental degradation there. The rules represent a compromise between folks who usually don’t get along when it comes to dividing up this state’s water: Northern and Southern Californians, urban and rural water districts, environmentalists and developers.

The new delta water rules, technically known as Draft Water Rights Regulation 1630 or simply D-1630, were reasonable, even farsighted. They took into account the many hard lessons learned these last seven years of drought. They even anticipated the federal government’s declaring a small fish known as the delta smelt an endangered species--an action taken last month that limited even more the amount of fresh water the state could take from the delta.

But a couple of weeks ago, when the water board was about to give final approval to this sound compromise, the process came to a halt. Powerful interest groups, mostly in agribusiness, decided they didn’t like the deal. They began pressuring board members and Gov. Wilson, who appoints them, to rewrite D-1630 so it would guarantee more water to big farmers.

That’s problematic, because the governor has said some insightful things in recent years about how Californians must stop fighting over water and learn instead to use it more creatively and efficiently. That is precisely what D-1630 is intended to do, and if Wilson is to be true to his words, he must stand by the compromise rules.

During the drought we all learned that we can use water more carefully--Los Angeles residents reduced their water use 20% without rationing. Privately, most farmers admit they can reduce their water consumption too, by using modern irrigation methods and planting water-efficient crops. By trying to scuttle D-1630, agribusiness just wants to maintain the status quo a little longer. That shortsighted strategy must be rejected: Gov. Wilson and the water board both should both reaffirm the delta water compromise.