Get Smart on Water

There is a lot of talk about “smart growth” in California these days but little action. Development is eating up prime farmland. Sprawl is creeping outward from urban centers. And the state refuses to take a role in guiding new development with some sense of its long-range impact. That’s dumb.

But Sacramento can take a logical and necessary step right now to stop the most reckless type of development--the construction of vast new housing tracts without assurance they will have adequate water supplies.

Assemblywoman Sheila Kuehl (D-Santa Monica) is the author of AB 1219, which would prohibit cities and counties from approving any new development of 200 houses or more without assurance that available water supplies would meet the needs, in addition to those of existing customers. The supply would have to carry the region through a multiyear drought, such as California has suffered three times in the past 40 years.

The Legislature made a stab at linking water availability and development in 1995 by passing SB 901, by Sen. Jim Costa (D-Fresno). It requires that local government plans include an assessment of the area’s existing and projected water supplies. But the law is not enforceable because cities and counties can ignore warnings that there will not be enough water to support new development.

The Kuehl bill is sponsored by the East Bay Municipal Utility District, serving the east side of San Francisco Bay. The district had to sue to halt an 11,000-house development because it couldn’t serve the new homes without rationing water to longtime customers in the event of drought. Several giant developments in Southern California, including the Newhall Ranch project, have been challenged on the basis of water availability, but without the legal clout that AB 1219 would provide.

Kuehl’s bill faces a critical hearing in the Assembly Local Government Committee next Wednesday. It deserves approval there and by the full Legislature, plus the signature of Gov. Gray Davis. It’s time to get smart on water.