By Katy Grimes

First there was the bullet train to nowhere. Now there are the tunnels to nowhere.

Gov. Jerry Brown is hell-bent on creating a legacy. Unfortunately, it also appears that most of California’s legislators make decisions based on legacy as well.

But lawmaking by legacy rarely bodes well.

Water wars

Brown announced Wednesday that the state intends to build two large tunnels to move water under the very fragile Delta, from Northern California to Southern California.

Where is Jake Gittes when you need him?

Gittes was the hard-boiled private investigator in “Chinatown,” the 1974 movie about the historical California battle over water. Set in Los Angeles in 1937, “Chinatown” was inspired by the California Water Wars, the historical disputes over land and water rights that raged in southern California during the 1910s and 1920s.

Gittes, played by Jack Nicholson, discovers that water is illegally being diverted, and that that agents of the water department have been demolishing farmers’ water tanks and poisoning their wells.

“Either you bring the water to L.A. or you bring L.A. to the water,” Noah Cross says, played by John Houston. Cross was the movie’s villain, and tried to gain control of all the water in Los Angeles.

It appears that like a character out of the movie, Gov. Jerry Brown has reignited California’s North-vs.-South battle over fresh water.

Water water everywhere, but not a drop to drink

Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar  and Brown held a Sacramento news conference at the California Natural Resources Agency to announce a massive, multibillion-dollar water diversion plan, which many are saying is only another version of the peripheral canal plan that voters rejected in 1982, 30 years ago, during Brown’s last run as governor.

Brown is acting like a woman scorned. “Analysis paralysis is not why I came back 30 years later to handle some of the same issues,” Brown said. “At this stage, as I see many of my friends dying… I want to get s— done.”

How eloquent.

Brown called the plan “a big idea for a big state.” But the plan to funnel water from the Sacramento River to pumps that supply water to parts of Southern California, the Central Valley and the Bay Area, has many worried that Northern California will be faced with shortages.

Farmers, fishermen, and environmentalists, oppose the plan, and rallied at the Capitol. They say diverting Northern California water would be the final death blow to the fragile Delta.

Water Politics

Devastating environmental litigation resulted in cutbacks on one third of all water deliveries to California’s Central Valley, causing agricultural production losses, thousands of jobs, and hundreds of millions of dollars in crops.

Three years ago, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service ordered major pumping cutbacks into the California Aqueduct that delivers water to the state’s farms, based on arbitrary concerns that the giant water pumps killed the Delta Smelt, a tiny fish not even indigenous to the Delta. The Fish and Wildlife Service ordered 81 billion gallons of water, enough to put 85,000 acres of farmland back into production, to flow out to the ocean each year, instead of feeding California’s Central Valley farms.

Instead of fighting to feed California’s crops and farm families, and to repair the state’s agricultural lifeblood, Brown has created another public works project to feed unions and high-cost union jobs.

This is the second giant public works project deal this month that Brown has sealed.  Just two weeks ago, he signed bills to authorize spending to begin on the phony high-speed rail project, which will tear up valuable Central Valley farmland.

Brown’s political vanity is taking precedence over reforms; his need for a legacy is apparently more important than the 37 million residents of the state. Brown should have done the right thing instead.  Because as Chinatown’s Noah Cross is also famous for saying,”Course I’m respectable. I’m old. Politicians, ugly buildings, and whores all get respectable if they last long enough.”

By: Wayne Lusvardi

Noted environmentalist Bjorn Lomborg recently said that cost-benefit studies could be used to evaluate big public works projects having environmental impacts in an age of austerity.  But California legislators propose to turn an unneeded cost-benefit study of the Sacramento Delta Conservation Plan into an apparent shakedown for jobs, land and water for a range of special groups mostly in Northern California.

Assemblyman Bill Berryhill, R-Stockton, introduced AB 2421, the Bay Delta Conservation Plan Cost and Benefits bill. The Assembly Committee on Water, Parks and Wildlife approved it on April 24.  It’s currently in the Appropriations Committee. Berryhill’s office told me that the bill will be heard after the state budget is finalized.

AB 2421 would authorize a redundant economic cost-benefit analysis to be conducted of the proposed Peripheral Canal project.

The Peripheral Canal is a proposed project to build either a surface canal around the periphery of the Sacramento Delta or tunnels underneath the Delta to convey water to Southern California.

The proposed independent cost-benefit analysis authorized under AB 2421 would duplicate two other cost-benefit studies of the Peripheral Canal.  The first two: the University of California, Berkeley would conduct one study and another would be completed as part of the environmental review process required under the California Environmental Quality Act.

This third cost-benefit study from AB 2421 is touted as a way for water ratepayers to hold down water rate increases. But this unneeded study would cost $1 million.

AB 2421 would require an independent third party to conduct a cost-benefit study of the Bay-Delta Conservation Plan.  A representative of the Legislative Analyst’s Office, the Delta Protection Commission, and the State Water Contractors would develop the scope of work for this study.  The Delta Protection Commission is stacked with members representing Northern California and the Delta area.  Nevertheless, Berryhill curiously said, “A fair and balanced analysis is all we want.”

Bi-Partisan But Special Interest Support

The Assembly Committee on Water, Parks and Wildlife approved AB 2421 by a vote of 10 to 2.  The bill received bi-partisan support from both northern and southern California legislators:

Jared Huffman, D-Marin and Sonoma Counties;
Bill Berryhill, R-Central Valley;
Bob Blumenfield, D-San Fernando Valley;
Nora Campos, D-San Jose;
Paul Fong,  D-Santa Clara County;
Beth Gaines, R-Alpine, El Dorado, Placer, Sacramento Counties;
Das Williams, D-Santa Barbara and Ventura Counties;
Roger Hernandez, D-San Gabriel Valley;
Ben Hueso, D-San Diego;
Yamiko Yamada, D-Sacramento.

Legislators opposed to the bill were:

Ricardo Lara, D-Los Angeles County Mid Cities;
Linda Halderman, R-Fresno and Madera Counties.

The bill was supported by a coalition of environmental, commercial fishing and real estate development interests as well as Delta counties and cities.

Supporting the bill were: Restore the Delta, Food and Water Watch, Sierra Club California, the Planning and Conservation League, Clean Water Action, the Pacific Coast Foundation of Fishermen’s Associations, the Delta Coalition, Ducks Unlimited, Lower Sherman Island Duck Hunter’s Association, the San Joaquin Council of Governments and County Board of Supervisors, the Greater Stockton Chamber of Commerce and the cities of Escalon, Ripon, and Stockton.

The A.G. Spanos Company and the Grupe Companies, both Stockton-based real estate development companies, also supported the bill.

Twenty-seven California water agencies, mostly in Southern California and the Westlands Water District in the Central Valley, opposed the bill, along with the California Chamber of Commerce.

Study Not Needed

Quoted in IndyBay.org online, Roger Patterson of the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California said, “I believe the legislation is simply not necessary.”

AB 2421 is an effort mainly by Northern California legislators to pander to Delta real estate, commercial fishing, recreation, water and other interests apparently having no firm water rights in the Delta.  A question remains if the cost-benefit study is intended to shake down the state for dedications and mitigations of land, water rights and jobs programs, or is truly concerned about the costs of the Peripheral Canal for ratepayers.

By WAYNE LUSVARDI

The waters are being roiled again in the Delta.

The roiling concerns H.R. 1837, the Republican-backed San Joaquin River Reliability Act currently pending before the U.S. House of Representatives.

Northern California Rep. John Garamendi, D-Walnut Grove, says the bill “destroys a state consensus” on the San Joaquin River and the Sacramento Delta.  Nothing could be further from the truth.

California’s Democratic U.S. senators, Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein, have joined Garamendi’s chorus and called “for consensus-based solutions that respect the interests of all stakeholders.”

There never was a consensus except perhaps between the plunderers of the spoils from California’s perpetual water wars.

The Shame of the River Consensus Sham

Garamendi says H.R. 1837 would undo 150 years of water law, remove all environmental protections for the Delta and Central Valley farmers and allow destructive water exports from the Delta.

He says H.R. 1837 should be called the “State Water Rights Repeal Act.” He’s right — but for the wrong reasons. What H.R. 1837 does is undo what Feinstein did with the San Joaquin River Restoration Act of 2009 – H.R. 146.  That bill was enacted three years ago, not 150 years ago.

Contra Garamendi, H.R. 146 was a prior water grab from farmers.  It limited how much water farmers can take for crop irrigation and imposed tiered water rates and environmental impact reports for renewal of all existing water contracts. In short, Feinstein’s H.R. 146 redistributed the water taken from farmers to fishing, recreational and real estate interests.

There was no bipartisan consensus when Feinstein’s bill was passed.  In fact, it had to be bundled with a bunch of bills under the Omnibus Public Land Management Act of 2009 for it to pass even through a Democratic-controlled Congress and get signed by Democratic President Barack Obama.  There was no “consensus” except of Democrats.  Consensus implies that those having to give up water rights and have to pay higher water rates somehow concurred with Feinstein’s bill.  This was not the case.

H.R. 1837 Would Restore Genuine Consensus

What Republican Rep. Devin Nunes’ HR 1837 bill would do is repeal Feinstein’s HR 146 and replace it with the Bay-Delta Accord drafted in 1994.  The Bay-Delta Accord was “consented” to by both then-President Bill Clinton, a Democrat, and then-California Governor Pete Wilson, a Republican.  This is what genuine “consent of the governed” entails.

Rep. Nunes’s HR 1837 would depoliticize water contracts.  H.R. 1837 provides for water contracts to be renewed automatically, instead of being thrown to political piranhas for the picking under a contrived retroactive environmental impact report.

Sure, by undoing H.R. 146 and replacing it with H.R. 1837 commercial salmon fishermen, sport fishing and recreational-real estate interests would be denied new water rights.  But they never had any water rights in the first place. Nor were there any environmental impacts on them because they had no rights or ecosystem to impact.  All that an environmental impact report would conclude under California’s sham California Environmental Quality Act is that salmon fishing rights were not granted 150 years ago and should be now.

But farmers had to buy their land to get their riparian (river) water rights 150 years ago.  A riparian right is a right to use the natural flow of water on land that touches a river, lake, stream or creek.

Appropriative water rights are those obtained by permit, court actions or legislative action.  Such rights are always subject to who is in political power and whom they may want to redistribute the rights to.

Garamendi also claims that H.R. 1837 is “imbalanced” and does not “satisfy the needs of everyone in California.”   HR 1837 is no more imbalanced than is Feinstein’s H.R. 146, which harms Central Valley farmers.

Neither would H.R. 1837 “take away California’s ability to control our own water destiny,” as Garamendi claims, any more than Feinstein’s H.R. 146 did.  Both H.R. 146 and H.R. 1837 are federal legislation.

As for the charge that “water storage and water recycling are important components of water policy, and they’re lacking in HR 1837” — the same could be said of H.R. 146.

H.R. 1837 also does not, as the Democrats claim, “threaten thousands of jobs for salmon fishermen and Delta farmers.”  Those thousands of jobs for San Joaquin River salmon fishermen and farmers would just be taken away from Central Valley farmers and from city water ratepayers and consumers of agricultural produce.

Politics is Dis-sensus

Any determination of an environmental impact under H.R. 146 isn’t environmental, but cultural and political.  Why, under Feinstein’s HR 146, in a drought should commercial salmon fisheries, sport fishermen and recreational/real estate interests have first dibs on water over?  Why should fishing and recreational interests be granted water rights without buying them?

And what about the “stranded assets” of farmland that no longer will have irrigation water?   Shouldn’t government re-pay farmers for those “sunk costs,” instead of hiding behind the sham that a “regulatory taking” is non-compensable?  Where is the “public purpose” behind the sham wealth redistribution of H.R. 146?  How is H.R. 146 any different than taking private property rights and giving them to developers under California’s defunct Redevelopment Law?

Water Rights by Force and Fraud — or Consent of the Governed?

A mix of force, fraud and consent of the governed have held California’s historic water contract together.  The elements of that contract have been Northern California giving up water to Central Valley farmers and Southern California cities in exchange for Delta flood protection, cheap hydropower and some water for themselves.

Feinstein’s H.R. 146 and the state-level Delta Reform Act together change the existing water social contract in California so that Central Valley farmers and Southern California cities get less water and in return Northern California gets Delta flood protection, cheap hydropower, a greater share of the water to redistribute to special interests and a new Delta regional sewage system to be paid for mainly by farmers and cities in the Southern half of the state.

Feinstein’s H.R. 146 confiscated water rights by the force of law and the fraudulent ideology of environmentalism and redistributed it to non-farming constituents under a wealth distribution scheme. Nunes’ H.R. 1837 merely returns those water rights to the pre-2009 genuine political “consensus.”

A sham consensus is no substitute for consent of the governed in California’s political water wars.

By WAYNE LUSVARDI

Ready for another phantom “drought”? The National Resources Defense Council is. The NRDC’s bogus Delta Smelt lawsuit brought the court-ordered “drought” from 2007 to 2010.

Now the NRDC is launching a disinformation campaign to divert the public’s attention from the bigger water issues of the Sacramento Delta. On Sept. 16, 2011, U.S. District Court Judge Oliver Wanger threw the case out of court as based on bogus science.

Gov. Jerry Brown declared the “drought” over in 2011. Yet water rates have risen anyway across the state as a result of the bogus “drought.”

In the Feb. 6 issue of the San Francisco Chronicle, NRDC attorney Doug Obegi  said there are three “facts” and three “myths” about the Sacramento Delta.  Like any slick attorney, he is working on you as if you were on a jury to make sure you are persuaded of his case.

The Delta is where most of the water runoff from the snowpack of the Sierra Nevada Mountain Range ends up.  California depends on the Delta for most of its water for farms and cites, as well as fishing and water recreation.

To understand the big issues with the upcoming Delta Plan of the State legislature’s Delta Stewardship Council and the proposed $11.1 billion Water Bond on the November ballot, it is important not to be distracted by small facts and alleged irrelevant myths.

The NRDC’s device for distracting you from the water issues of the Sacramento Delta is a purported checklist of so-called “facts” and “myths” about California’s water system.  Let’s look at them without being diverted from the larger issues.

Small Facts and Big Myths as Diversions

NRDC Diversion No. 1:  “Northern Californians don’t get their water from the delta, so we shouldn’t care what happens.”

Obegi wants Northern Californians to care about what happens with the water from the Delta.  Northern Californians should not think that they don’t get their water from the Delta.  Ok, being involved is a good thing.

But NRDC’s emotional appeal is to your intelligence.  If you were smart and knew that Northern California relied on water from the Delta you would be politically alert and active.  People want to brag about being smart about the car they bought, about their “Smart Phone,” or the politician or ballot measure they voted for.

It is important for Northern Californians to be educated about the upcoming Delta water issues. But the above so-called myth is just used as a subtle set-up to make you believe that Southern California is about to steal more water again from Northern California. As will be explained below, this is the opposite of what has happened and is likely to happen.

Water is a socialized commodity in California. It does not belong to Northern Californians or Southern Californians.  There is no water to “steal.”  Long ago Californians agreed to a social contract for water: Southern California got water and Northern California got flood protection from the occasional destructive rising of the inland sea of the Sacramento Delta. (Think Hurricane Katrina.) By subtly entering emotionalism into the issue, Obegi diverts you from the bigger facts that will be explained below.

NRDC Diversion No. 2: “Even with stronger restrictions on pumping to protect salmon and other native fish, the state and federal water projects divert as much water from the delta as they did from 1980 to 2000. As much water is diverted from the delta on average today as before the historically high pumping levels of the 2000s devastated the delta ecosystem, according to the state Department of Water Resources and the Public Policy Institute of California.”

What the NRDC has done is slipped what is called a non sequitur into the above fact.  What a non sequitur does is claim to make a cause and effect relationship when, in fact, there is no logical connection. In street language, it is a “disconnect.”

It is true that state and federal water projects are pumping no more water from the Delta on average than they did from 1980 to 2000 (with the exception of the 3 years of the above-described court ordered “drought” from 2007 to 2010).  But that does not mean that “high pumping levels of the 2000’s devastated the Delta ecosystem.”

Salmon and even the Delta Smelt are currently thriving after the high rainfall and snowpack of 2010 and the resumption of pumping from the Delta.

There are other reasons for a long-term threat to the Delta ecosystem.  But high pumping levels typically also mean high water levels in storage reservoirs. They also mean abundant fresh water levels in the Delta that boost the population of desirable species of fish, fishing and recreation.

Huge pumps on the Delta that send water to Southern California are not the only threats to the Delta ecology. The Delta ecology is more threatened by local urban runoff than from pumping water out of the Delta. One of the major sources of pollution of the Delta is local government wastewater treatment plants in Northern California.   But the NRDC wants Northern Californians to believe that high water pumping to Southern California is the only culprit. The NRDC can manufacture an unnecessary water war just as it manufactured a phony drought.

NRDC Diversion No. 3: “As many jobs were lost from closing California’s salmon fishery in 2009 as were lost in farming communities from restricting pumping to protect fish. True. Despite wildly inflated myths, studies by economists from the state, UC Davis and University of the Pacific show that California’s fishing industry lost about as many jobs as did the farming industry when pumping was restricted during the 2009 drought to protect fish.”

This may be true. But unlike fishing, farmers can shift their workers to fallow fields and alternative crops in other locations that are not dependent on Delta water.  Farmers typically rely on groundwater supplies when there is a dry year and the Delta cannot meet all its contractual obligations to farmers.

Once again, what the NRDC is trying to do is cover up its own blame for causing job losses due to the Delta Smelt case they filed to stop pumping of water to farms in Central California and cities in the southern half of the state. The NRDC should be blamed for job losses to both farming and the fishing industries.

The NRDC once again is trying to politically play fishermen against farmers, while shifting blame away from themselves for job losses during the phony drought of 2007 to 2010.  Nice try. But it won’t work.

NRDC Diversion No. 4: “Fact: 4. Despite increasing flows to protect fish over the past two decades, delta fish populations continue to decline. False. Since pumping has been reduced, populations of delta smelt have rebounded dramatically, and salmon populations have also increased after the rainy season of 2010.

Contrary to the NRDC, the Federal judge in the Delta Smelt case ruled that the science presented by the NRDC and other government agency in the case was “false testimony.” It was never proven that Delta Smelt fish populations declined during the pumping of water out of the Delta.

NRDC Divsersion No. 5: “Most of the water pumped from the delta goes to Southern California lawns and swimming pools. False. Nearly half of the water exported from the delta is for agribusiness. Thanks to improved efficiency, Los Angeles uses as much water today as it did 25 years ago, despite adding 1 million residents, and Orange County has one of the largest water recycling plants in the nation. Even so, improved water-use efficiency could create trillions of gallons of new water each year for cities and agriculture.”

The above is true.  Southern California lawns and swimming pools do not get half of the Delta water exports.  But what the NRDC omits is that the “environment” gets 64 percent of all distributed water in a wet year; and 35 percent even in a dry year.

Southern California water agencies are entitled to a maximum of 62 percent of the water deliveries from the State Water Project through the Delta in a wet year. But that only represents 2.6 percent of all the distributed water in California in a wet year.  And agriculture uses only 28 percent of distributed water in a wet year and 42 percent on average, according to the State Department of Water Resources.

The NRDC touts water recycling as a resource for Southern California. But California’s new Green Chemistry Law threatens water recycling. The Green Chemistry Law may not allow hard to dissolve chemicals from drinking water in tiny amounts.

NRDC Diversion No. 6: “California can divert less water from the delta and still meet its water needs by investing in water efficiency, water recycling and improved groundwater and storm water management.  True. Modeling by the state Department of Water Resources shows that the new water sources available by investing in water efficiency and recycling is more water than California has ever exported from the delta. Urban water managers know this; the City of Los Angeles plans to meet its water needs by investing in these tools, while simultaneously cutting its use of delta water in half.”

What the NRDC does not tell you in the above statement is that Southern California has already reduced water use by 1 million acre feet — enough water for up to 6 million people — from the 1980s to the present.  The new Delta Plan proposes to cut water another 20 percent.  But this will not replace the necessity for a water conveyance system around the Delta that would provide a more stable ecology.

Lost Legitimacy

As in court cases, diversionary tactics can be useful when arguments fail you, when you are backed into a corner, when you feel you are about the lose or when you are uncomfortable with the direction of the conversation.  The NRDC is signaling that they only have diversionary tactics to persuade you to shift local cleanup of the Delta mainly onto Southern Californians.  The NRDC’s arguments have been made to look like they have captured the high ground with facts and that others positions are mere myths.

After the infamous Delta Smelt court case, the NRDC has lost legitimacy in California. Their current disinformation campaign on the Delta is just a continuation of their divisive water wars.  The NRDC should not be listened to any longer on the issue of the Delta.

By WAYNE LUSVARDI

Remember “Chinatown,” the murky 1974 movie about the water wars in the Los Angeles Basin in the 1930s, starring Jack Nicholson and Faye Dunaway?

A January 18 California appeals court water rights case is reminiscent of the multilayered plots and subplots in the flick.

The “Chinatown” movie plot involves fictional character Hollis Mulwray who is  murdered due to his opposition to the proposed construction of a new dam.  The fictional Mulwray is based on the real historical person of William Mulholland, the infamous head of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, who allegedly stole water from Mono Lake in Northern California in the early 20th Century.

But the current court case is not like the movie “Chinatown” in one important aspect. There is no sex involved in the putting in and taking out of water from the Los Angeles Central Basin Water District water basin that is the focus of this court case. But there is alleged bureaucratic bigamy and robbery.

Quoted in the Long Beach Press Telegram newspaper, Long Beach City Water Department Director Kevin Wattier succinctly summed up the main issue in the case, “Right now it’s like a bank account where you can put money in but can’t take it out.”

The legal citation for the current case is Water Replenishment District of Southern California versus the City of Cerritos, Case No. B226743, Second District Court of Appeals, filed Jan. 18, 2012.

The Plaintiffs

The original complainants (plaintiffs) were five cities and a regional water replenishment district: Long Beach, Lakewood, Los Angeles, Huntington Park and Vernon; and the Water Replenishment District of Southern California.

A water replenishment district is a special agency of government that recharges underground water supplies from natural rainwater runoff captured from a local watershed.  In this case the water recharge basins are adjacent to the upper San Gabriel River and the 605 Freeway in Los Angeles County.  And the watershed involved is the San Gabriel Mountain and River watershed.

All the cities involved in the case are located downstream of the water recharge basins.  Long Beach is located near the mouth of the San Gabriel River to the Pacific Ocean. A map of the cities along the San Gabriel River can be found here.

The Defendants

The defendants (respondents) are three cities and one sub-regional water agency: the cities of Cerritos, Downey and Signal Hill, together with the Central Basin Municipal Water District.  The Central Water Basin is obviously located near the center of the land surface of the Los Angeles urban basin.

While there is no sex involved in this case, there is bureaucratic bigamy and alleged robbery: all of the parties to the case share the same underground water basin.  In fact, the Water Replenishment District was created to refill the Central and West Coast underground water storage basins.  There has been a history of court cases in the Central Basin alleging “overdrafting.”  That is water terminology for “highway robbery.”

The History of the Central Basin Water Wars

The Central Basin has a 277-square-mile underground footprint.  If the basin were square shaped, it would comprise an area of about 16.5 miles by 16.5 miles. The Central Basin serves city water departments, unincorporated areas, private water companies, school districts, electric utilities and landowners.  The Central Basin Water District sells treated water to cities and others within its regional service area. Like the movie “Chinatown,” water is a many-layered story.  There are no murders but there are plenty of complex water wars.

Going back to 1965, a court ordered that 500 parties having water rights in the Central Basin were subject to limits as to how much water they could take to prevent overdrafts.

In 2001, several interested parties sought unused storage space in the Central Basin.  A court appointed the California Department of Water Resources to serve as “watermaster,” or water traffic cop.  But at that time, the court rejected the legal notion that the right to extract water creates a concurrent right to store water.

By 2009, another group of water pumpers bubbled up. They filed a court action to use 330,000 acre-feet of “dewatered space” in the Central Basin for future water storage.  This would be enough water for about 660,000 households per year. This action sought even more layers of complexity: three “watermasters” were to be appointed.

The trial court issued an order on July 7, 2010. The order said it only had authorization to apportion water rights and not rights to unused capacity space in the Central Basin.  Additionally, the court believed it could not appoint “watermasters” over unused space in the basin that held no water today. The Water Replenishment District of Southern California is appealed the ruling.

The Current Court Ruling

On Jan. 18, 2012 the State Appellate Court ruled that the trial court: 1) had authority to allocate future storage in the Central Basin; 2) had jurisdiction over water transfers between the Central and nearby West Coast Basins; and 3) was not prohibited from appointing a “watermaster” over unused space in the Central Basin. The court additionally ruled that the Central Basin Water District might also be able to serve as “watermaster.”

The defendants — the cities of Cerritos, Downey and Signal Hill — contended: 1) their costs would be increased if others were given the right to lease unused capacity in the Basin; 2) over-drafting of the Basin could result if new “wet water” was not put in first; and 3) there was a threat the appointed watermaster could try to merge the Central and West Coast Basins. The Central Basin did not want a proverbial “shotgun marriage” to result over the issue of renting a room to the unwanted bastard child of unused basin capacity.

Presumably, the above issues can be heard and adjudicated now that the jurisdictional issues have been clarified.

Enormous Implications

The timing of this case has enormous implications for what is happening statewide.  The Delta Stewardship Council appointed by the State Legislature is about to put into place widely encompassing laws that could usurp powers from local water districts.  Local water agencies would no longer be able to do anything that adversely impacted the Sacramento Delta.  The Delta is where Southern California gets most of its imported water supplies.  Conceivably, local water departments might not be able to issue any new water permits or “will serve” letters to real estate developers if that meant using more imported Delta water.

David O. Powell, the former chief engineer of the San Diego Office of the State Department of Water Resources and the Alameda Water District, said he believed the proposed Delta Plan would result in cutting water allocations to Southern California in half.

This is despite Southern California using about the same amount of water it used 25 years ago, even with 35 percent more population. Through conservation, Southern California has already given up about 1 million acre-feet of water per year to the Delta ecosystem. That is enough water for about 2 million households or 4.5 million people. Yet the Delta Stewardship Council wants to reduce water use by and additional 20 percent by the year 2020.

State and regional water agencies have shown an inability to bring more water to Southern California without huge, costly infrastructure projects, such as: the proposed Peripheral Canal that would route water around the Delta and/or the proposed $11.1 billion water bond.  Both of these projects would pinch the already deficit-plagued state budget.  There are matching fund requirements in the proposed state water bond.  Thus, the real cost of the proposed water bond may be about $18 billion.  The cost of the Peripheral Canal is estimated to cost $13 billion, or $23.5 billion with bond interest costs.

Consequently, local water districts and cities are going to have to find a way to capitalize on the unused storage capacity in the eight underground water basins in Southern California.  They may be compelled to contract for some of their own water supplies instead of depending on more imported water from regional water wholesalers.  This could mean water transfers from recycled water, from the new Cadiz water basin in the Southern California desert, voluntary purchases of water from farmers, desalinated ocean water or the development of new water resources. This will require a much more open water conveyance and storage system with reasonable transfer costs than the present semi-socialized system with many trade barriers.

So the outcome of the Water Replenishment District versus the city of Cerritos case may have huge consequences for Southern California’s cities and economy.

Economic Homicide? 

To add another subplot to the story, Assembly Bill 375 — the anti-urban sprawl bill passed in 2008 — would divert future population growth to the coastal urban areas.  But this may result in “no growth” if the water spigot from imported water from the Delta is simultaneously shut off.  This could kill off an economic recovery.

So maybe the above-mentioned court case is like the movie “Chinatown” and will involve murder — economic homicide — anyway.

Or it may have a wedding and happy ending: economic reproduction if local water agencies and city water departments are allowed to contract for future water and deposit it in fertile underground local water basins.

A sequel to “Chinatown” came out in 1990, called “Two Jakes.” It wasn’t as good, even though it starred Jack Nicholson and another great actor, Harvey Keitel.

It’s time for a better sequel. Call it, “Central Water Basin Blues.” Jack Nicholson could star once more, this time with Arnold Schwarzenegger, now an actor again after his stint as governor. As in the original “Chinatown,” and as with the real California, reality and fiction would blend on the celluloid.

By WAYNE LUSVARDI

A bureaucratic creature has crawled from murky waters of the Sacramento Delta.

What could be worse? The pork-laden $11 billion proposed California Water Bond, on the ballot in 2012, that does not include any new water storage and would usurp control of water from local water agencies? Or the “pernicious” $3.4 billion public goods water charge originally proposed by the California Public Utilities Commission?

This is California. So the answer is: Both! The union of the two creatures is SB 34, the California Water Resources Investment Act, by state Sen. Joe Simitan, D-Palo Alto.

This misbegotten piece of legislation was recently passed in the Natural Resources and Water Committee of the Senate by five environmental activist Democrats: Fran Pavley of Santa Monica, Noreen Evans of Santa Rosa, Christine Kehoe of San Diego, Alex Padilla of San Fernando Valley and Lois Wolk of Vacaville. It was opposed by three Republican senators from counties with large farm constituencies: Doug LaMalfa of Richvale, Anthony Cannella of Merced  and Jean Fuller of Bakersfield.

It is probably not coincidental that this bill has been drafted after three state opinion polls showed overwhelming opposition by voters for raising taxes, despite being reported otherwise in the newspaper media. Apparently, those environmentalist proponents of the $11 billion California Water Bond are panicking that their proposed ballot initiative scheduled for the voters will be defeated at the ballot box in 2012.

Thus, an apparent desperate attempt has arisen to gain support from legislators who have proposed a public goods water surcharge to pass the bill now.

New Bureaucracy

The proposed bill is a work in progress, but proposes to usurp control of water statewide by the creation of a California Delta mega-water agency that would have far-reaching powers to fund or veto local water projects.  In essence, this bill would create a new superordinate layer of water bureaucracy with near totalitarian powers that would impose water taxes with no direct benefit to those paying the tax.

Nor would it provide any direct elected representation for taxpayers. It would further remove representative responsiveness and accountability, and thus legitimacy, from “the will of the people.”

On top of that, it would for the first time apparently give regulatory entities — water control boards — the power to tax and/or redistribute water taxes to so-called environmental water projects without any accountability structure to the taxpayers.  It would change the Department of Water Resources from solely a wholesale water planner, engineer and system operator into a cop that would police farms for best water management practices.

In addition to reporting to the governor and the Legislature, the Department of Water Resources would report to the Delta Stewardship Council.  The more layers of government, the more dysfunction. It would be a radical alteration of California’s democratic form of government and separation of powers to tax, regulate and enforce.

If, as many experts say, the structural problems of California’s chronic budget deficits and droughts are unsolvable due its form of dysfunctional democracy, SB 34 signals there is an apparent easy way to solve it: get rid of democracy and replace it with a bureaucratic oligarchy. Think of the power of the New York Parks Department under Robert Moses from the 1930’s to the 1970’s to indiscriminately use eminent domain to build bridges, tollways, beaches and stadiums.

Think of the reincarnation of the oligopolistic Southern Pacific Railroad described in Frank Norris’s epic 1901 novel, “The Octopus: A Story of California,” only with the powers of government to tax, regulate and use eminent domain. Perhaps the neologism Octogarchy would fit for the modern day “Creature from the Delta Lagoon” that has surfaced with SB 34.  Is California’s long experiment with democracy over?  Start following SB 34 to find out.  Let’s look at what’s been proposed so far.

New Excise Taxes

As initially proposed, SB 34 would impose an excise tax on water called a public goods charge of:

* $110 per acre-foot of water on urban retail water customers;
* $20 per acre of land on agricultural water customers; or,
* $10 public goods charge per acre of irrigated land if the agricultural customer utilizes best management practices for the type of crop and soil, as determined by the DWR.

Half of the public goods charge — the excise tax — would go to finance regional water management plans that apparently would require approval by the new California Water Commission-Delta Stewardship Council, not your local water agency.

The other half would support the California Water Commission programs and the Delta Stewardship Council and Delta Plan.  Fifty percent is a pretty steep administrative overhead cost for anything except possibly an Octopus.

SB 34 is in the process of being blended with SB 527, by Sen. Lois Wolk, D-Davis, which would set up a taxing structure.

Phil Rosentrater of the Western Municipal Water District in Riverside County was quoted in the North County Times:

It would force water agencies to pay a steep new water tax with no direct benefit to those who pay. The state Legislature has a long history of borrowing from funds like this and never paying the money back.

Call it an Octopus.

Also quoted in the North County Times, Kim Thorner of the Olivenhain Municipal Water District pointed out that this excise tax would penalize local water agencies for “developing water supplies that reduce reliance on the Delta by having a fee imposed.”  Recycled water, expanded settlement and groundwater basins, conjunctive use basins, and desalination would be doubly taxed. Inevitably, there would be mandates for water purveyors to use green power to pump their water, adding yet another premium on water ratepayers.

Thus far, the Farm Bureau, the San Diego County Water Authority, the Western Municipal Water District, the Olivenhain Municipal Water District, the Friant Water Authority and the California Taxpayers Association have indicated they would oppose the bill.  No wonder the water agencies oppose the bill. It would make them mere appendages of the Octopus. And water ratepayers would be eaten alive by the Octopus.

As Thomas V. Cator wrote in the San Francisco Weekly Star in 1890:

Railroads are good things. So are rivers, but not when they rise above their banks and deluge and destroy.