Lawmakers predict water package passage today

Published online on Tuesday, Nov. 03, 2009

California lawmakers waded part of the way late Monday through a landmark set of proposals to revive the state's creaking water system, and legislative leaders predicted they would finish the job today.

Before adjourning shortly after midnight, the state Senate approved bills that would change the way the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta is managed; set ambitious new statewide goals for water conservation, and ask voters next year to approve a $9.99 billion bond package that would pay for water-related projects ranging from dams to recycling.

Two other bills, which would require local water agencies to monitor underground water levels and increase penalties for illegal water diversions, fell just short of approval.

Except for the bond measure, all of the bills are "co-joined," which means they all must be approved for any of them to take effect. But Senate President Darrell Steinberg, D-Sacramento, predicted he would have the votes today to push them through.

"It's going to work out," he said. "I'm confident we will have the votes. This is a package. There's something in it for every stakeholder that's been involved in the water battles for decades. And we're not going to begin prying it apart."

The Assembly spent Monday afternoon and evening doing nothing, while waiting for the Senate bills to move. After senators adjourned, Speaker Karen Bass, D-L.A., decided to wait until this morning to begin taking up parts of the package.

"We'll stay here until we're finished," Bass said. "I'm very optimistic. ... I don't think anything is going to change people's votes over the next nine hours."

The Assembly version of the bond proposal was expected to be as much as $1 billion over the $9.99 billion approved by the Senate. But Steinberg said he believed senators "would be open" to considering the larger amount even though some had questioned whether the financially strapped state should be borrowing so heavily.

Proponents of the plan had pushed for a quick approval - once months of tortuous negotiations among farmers, environmentalists, water agencies, business interests and others had concluded. The fear was that the longer the package was debated, the more likely it was to be picked apart.

If it is approved, supporters said it would constitute the most significant reform in 50 years of how California stores, delivers and manages its water supply.

"The state Senate has passed legislation tonight that was decades in the making," Steinberg told reporters. "Between the Delta bill, which will finally provide a coherent structure of government to address the failing ecosystem of the Delta, to the bond, to the conservation bill, this was a tremendous night."

Not everyone was as sanguine about the evening's events, and the dissatisfaction cut across party lines.

Sen. Lois Wolk, a Davis Democrat, characterized the bill creating a new Delta governing council as a thinly disguised attempt to foster construction of a controversial canal through the region, which, she said, would be "the equivalent of a 100-lane freeway."

"This makes it clear you intend to take the building of a peripheral canal out of the hands of the public," she said.

Sen. Dave Cox, a Fair Oaks Republican, objected to provisions in the conservation bill that he said threatened to usurp the Sacramento region's rights to water from the Sacramento River, in favor of the thirsty and populous southern reaches of the state.

"We're not talking about your water," he said. "We're talking about our water."

But other lawmakers argued that when it comes to water, the importance of the issue should transcend the partisan rancor and regional spats that dominate so much of Capitol discourse.

"Our state is dying a slow death from dehydration," said Sen. Abel Maldonado, R-Santa Maria. "This isn't about Democrats and it isn't about Republicans, and this isn't about the northern part of California or the southern part. This is about the people of California who need water. And that's everybody."