Dan Walters: Capitol labors long on water but produces a drop in the bucket

Published online on Wednesday, Nov. 04, 2009

Winston Churchill paid tribute to the young fighter pilots who staved off Nazi Germany's aerial assault on England during the Battle of Britain with characteristic eloquence: "Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few."

California politicians' machinations over water, still under way in the Capitol late Tuesday with a conclusion uncertain, inspires a parody of Churchill's immortal words, to wit: "Never in California's political history have so many politicians labored so long to produce so little."

The politicians were, of course, patting themselves on the back even before final enactment. Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg, who had made settlement of California's water wars a personal crusade, hailed the package as "far-reaching legislation which has been decades in the making."

But even if enacted, which was still uncertain Tuesday night as amendments were being hastily written to satisfy demands from powerful interest groups and overcome stubborn opposition, the package falls well short of making definitive water policy.

It ducks hard decisions on specific projects to repair the environmentally damaged Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, from which most of the state's municipal and agricultural water is drawn, or on a "peripheral canal" to carry water around the Delta, or on new reservoirs, or even on conservation, other than a vague goal of reducing per capita use by 20 percent.

The package utters sweeping declarations about achieving wonderful things and creates a new governmental infrastructure of non-elected officials who may, or may not, make those key decisions many years in the future, depending on who succeeds Arnold Schwarzenegger as governor and whom that next governor appoints to the interlocking new water agencies.

It also includes a big bond issue – how big was still being negotiated late Tuesday – to buy support from myriad water stakeholders with taxpayers' money, regardless of whether any new water storage and conveyance facilities actually materialize.

Tellingly, one section of the Senate's version of the bond, passed in the dead of night, would provide $10 million for Steinberg's pet project, a Sacramento center for social tolerance, that has nothing, really, to do with water. Its inclusion undercuts pledges by Steinberg and others that the package would not include gratuitous pork and gives opponents some potentially damaging ammunition if and when the bond goes before voters.

All in all, therefore, the package falls short of the decisive action that California so sorely needs and that decades of perpetual political war among water agencies, water users, environmentalists and other interests have blocked.

It is, at most, a small step toward action, but whether it actually fixes the Delta and provides more reliability in water supply, its declared twin goals, won't be known for many years.