They're fighting over water in the Capitol, but lurking just below the surface is the real issue of how and where California develops land in the years and decades ahead.
In a semiarid state such as California,whether land remains undeveloped, is cultivated for agriculture, or is covered with houses and shopping centers depends almost entirely on the availability of water.
That was true when Los Angeles' civic and political gentry, eager for profitable land development in the San Fernando Valley, stealthily grabbed water from Owens Valley a century ago. It's even truer today.
It is, in fact, now a matter of state law. Eight years ago, then-Gov. Gray Davis signed legislation, backed by environmental groups, that requires any major land development to have an assured source of water. The legislation means that a developer not only needs a service agreement with a water agency, but must prove that the agency can, indeed, supply the water.
However, since water is an inherently variable commodity and since the California water system's reliability has been further eroded by court decisions restricting exports from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, the 2001 measure has become a potent weapon in development battles.
The land-use factor is one of the reasons why environmental groups have divided over the proposed water legislation.
Those that focus on the delta have embraced improved water-supply reliability as the price for environmental improvements in the troubled estuary (along, it would seem, with millions of dollars that would flow through their hands via a "land conservancy" program).
However, those that are more concerned with fighting land-use battles in the Southland oppose the notion of building a canal around the delta or otherwise improving water supply reliability, implicitly because it would reduce their legal weaponry.
The only certainty is that water will have an immense impact on how California's land is used.
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