Steps Toward Water Abundance

Earlier this month a letter was sent to Governor Newsom from the State Water Contractors, an association of 27 water agencies that together deliver water to nearly 30 million Californians and irrigate nearly one million acres of farmland.

This letter is a document of extraordinary importance to the future of California’s water supply. It summarizes several significant reasons the cost of water is rising at the same time as the supply of water is shrinking, and it suggests specific solutions. Throughout this lengthy letter, the tone is reasonable and professional. But if you read between the lines, this letter is a primal scream, voiced by people who are forced to pay for a State Water Project that delivers less water every year.

Quoting from the letter, “the SWP exemplifies a modern case of ‘death by a thousand cuts,’ gradually undermined by countless seemingly small challenges over time.” This truth is exemplified in the dizzying number of agencies, laws, and regulations, the endless litigation, alongside chronically inadequate funding; all of it constantly changing. It makes it hard to even report on the fight for water abundance, much less fight for anything that is more than an incremental step forward. Every year we spend more and get less.

For those of us not immersed in the endless procession of legislative actions and agency directives that affect water deliveries, the issues brought up by the State Water Contractors in their letter to the governor may appear to be complicated details. But the contents of this six-page letter are a condensed discussion, selecting only the deepest of the thousands of cuts. Here is an attempt to summarize some of the highlights:

1 – Veto AB 1319, which would further empower the California Dept. of Fish and Wildlife to list species as “provisional candidates” under the California Endangered Species Act “with no opportunity for public comment and no requirement that the determination be based on science.”

2 – Clarify the criteria under which State Water Project operations are altered because of species that are listed (or are provisional candidates for listing) as threatened or endangered. Mitigation (i.e., reduced water deliveries) “should be proportional to the magnitude and nature of the effect” that water deliveries have on threatened or endangered species.

3 – To very loosely paraphrase the next section: Quit taking forever to update implementation of the Bay-Delta Plan. The State Water Board began the update process in 2009, sixteen years ago. It’s still not done. Meanwhile, not having clear objectives and operating guidelines has created perpetual uncertainty, preventing valuable projects from getting started.

Continue reading here.