Gov. Jerry Brown’s aides treated the release last week of a massive environmental review that marshaled evidence in support of his $15.7 billion plan to build two 35-mile-long tunnels in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta as an

Critics, however, scoffed, saying Brown’s project becomes more unpopular the more it is discussed. In October, when the governor hoped to have consolidated broad support behind the plan, four Northern California members of Congress and eight members of the California Legislature sent letters imploring the federal government to look at what they called fundamental flaws in the project, starting with its shaky financing.

The 90,000-page document hailed by the Brown administration concludes that the two huge tunnels would stabilize statewide water deliveries from the Sacramento River and improve the health of the Delta in a way that was the least problematic of various options now being considered. If approved by state and federal regulators and the Legislature, the project would divert in normal conditions 5 percent more water from the river than is now standard.

The governor told reporters the tunnels had been subject to “more environmental review than any other project in the history of the world.”

Greens, some farmers implacably opposed

Yet even if regulators give their blessing, Brown faces huge political obstacles: While the project has the support of water districts in Southern and Central California and is expected to win support from the business community, politically influential environmentalists have been staunch opponents. They argue that the massive tunnels would actually create new environmental problems, among other criticisms.

The proposal also remains deeply unpopular with Northern California farmers. “We just don’t think that the only answer is to take more water out of a river in crisis,” said Osha Meserve, a Sacramento land-use lawyer working with agriculture and conservation groups, told the Los Angeles Times. Meserve said even if the review was “a million pages,” it couldn’t redeem a bad idea.

The project could also be a tough sell to the public, Sacramento insiders believe — and not just because it would raise water rates statewide. Some Californians unaware of the state’s 160-year history of trying to create a more reliable state water system may see it as a costly overreaction to the drought. Some will look at the highly publicized problems with two other big state projects — the bullet train and the Bay Bridge — and wonder whether the state is up to the challenge of building two massive tunnels.

In May 2015, Brown said critics of his “WaterFix” plan should “shut up” until they were more familiar with it. But in the ensuing 19 months, criticism has only grown as more details are released. Environmentalists think Brown is overselling the benefits of the plan. Many Republicans say the billions would be much better spent on new dams and reservoirs.

It appears the governor will have to do considerable lobbying and arm-twisting — much as he did with Propositions 47 and 57, his two criminal-justice reforms — to line up support in the Legislature. A campaign apparatus — the Californians for Water Security — has been set up to aid his efforts. But as he grows closer to the end of his fourth and final term as governor, his influence seems likely to wane.

Some lawmakers hope to give voters veto power

Meanwhile, a new hurdle looms. A bill with eight co-authors that sought to require a public vote before the tunnels could be built — AB 1713 — passed an Assembly committee on an 8-4 vote early this year only to never be considered again. It is likely to re-emerge in the coming session, its sponsors say.

In his first go-around as governor, Brown’s similarly ambitious proposal to shift water from Northern California to points south was rejected soundly at the ballot box. Proposition 9, the Peripheral Canal Act, lost 62 percent to 38 percent in June 1982. Opponents built their campaign on the idea that the project was highly expensive and that it helped Southern California at the expense of Northern California.

A longstanding truism when it comes to needed goods such as water systems, flood control or catastrophic earthquake insurance is that the public wants them but does not want to pay for them.

This was confirmed anew by a recent USC-L.A. Times poll, which found only 36 percent of those polled were in favor of raising taxes for statewide water system upgrades. A plurality of 46 percent indicated they would be willing to pay more to assure a more stable water supply.  However, 51 percent indicated that taxes should not be used to upgrade water storage and conveyance facilities.

As pollster Drew Lieberman of the Democratic polling firm of Greenberg, Quinlan and Rosner put it, “Support evaporates entirely when you put a price tag on it.”

The results of this poll may affect the $11.1 billion water bond on the Nov. 4 ballot that may or may not contain funding for any new water storage facilities. This bond will not fund the proposed new $15 billion twin tunnels to convey water under the Delta southward to farms and cities.

The water bond was pulled from the ballot in 2010 and 2012 for fear of voter rejection.

Voters like status quo’s stable cost

But there may be good reason beyond aversion to taxes as to why Californians don’t want to pay for added new taxes to build new water tunnels under the Delta and re-create a new Delta ecosystem for fish.

Consider the selling points for the bond. It would:

–Provide a fix for the Sacramento Delta for fish

–Upgrade flood levees

–Prevent a catastrophic loss of Delta water in an earthquake

–Provide more water storage for droughts

The idea that these projects are urgently needed at a cost of many billions of dollars is tough to sell to the public when they perceive the existing system to be working just fine, and when most urban areas have enough water to weather the drought. Many Californians probably feel they have already done their part — 87 percent of those polled indicated they have cut back their daily water usage. This leads most people to believe that conservation keeps the state water shortage manageable.

Voters favor more conservation

This viewpoint is borne out by the USC poll. All the highly favored policies were conservation-oriented: water recycling (92 percent), urban storm-water capture (91 percent), more underground water storage (83 percent), more personal cutbacks in water usage (81 percent) and desalination plants (75 percent).

Building new dams and reservoirs was only approved by 65 percent of those polled.

Water policy-makers have so successfully sold the public on water conservation that the public apparently does not believe in paying taxes for any new system-wide improvements because conservation is perceived as free.

From 2000 to 2006, Californians approved five water bonds totaling $18.7 billion. But that water bond funding mostly went for land acquisitions for wetlands or preserving existing mountain watersheds, landscaping for water retention, eliminating water-consuming invasive plant species, environmental studies, etc.  But not one drop of new system water storage was funded by those bonds.

Once again, voters will approve waterless water bonds that are conservation-oriented during economic boom times. But when it comes to funding hard water infrastructure projects in an economy still recovering from recession, the public believes that more conservation is the solution.

Those who opposed the proposed Peripheral Canal in 1982 in favor of conservation policies have been so successful that it is now difficult to get the public to favor any taxes for water projects — even in a crisis.

By Wayne Lusvardi

Who could have guessed it? A proposed water conveyance tunnel through the Sacramento Delta is a greater economic boondoggle than the California High-Speed Rail Authority.

That’s the conclusion of Jeffrey Michael, director of the Forecasting Center of the University of Pacific Eberhardt Business School. Michael’s conclusion comes from a preliminary cost-benefit study of the proposed Bay Delta Plan he conducted without any outside funding source.

The benefits-to-cost ratio of the California High-Speed
Rail Authority is five times higher than the proposed Bay Delta water conveyance tunnel. The Delta tunnels would be a loser generating only $1 in benefits for every $2.50 in costs, compared to $2 in benefits to $1 in costs for the bullet train boondoggle (according, at least, to train proponents).

The money tunnel

The “Through-the-Delta Tunnel” is a proposed project to convey water directly through the Sacramento Delta in a massive underground tube, rather than around the Delta in a Peripheral Canal.

In wet years, the tunnel would bring water to reservoirs and underground water banks for use by farms and Southern California cities in dry years. The tunnel has been designed to be very large in order to convey a huge volume of excess water during wet years.

Local Delta farmers, fishermen and environmentalists don’t want a surface canal around the Delta. So a subsurface tunnel project through the Delta was proposed. But, at $14 billion, a tunnel is the most costly alternative.  Have farmers and cities been compelled to pursue the most costly alternative for the project, only to have the tunnel option blamed as economically infeasible?

Voters shot down the proposed Peripheral Canal in 1982. Thirty years later, this has resulted in California only having about a half-year of water storage in the combined state and federal water systems in California to weather a drought. Southern California cities have had to learn to manage water by conservation rather than water storage.

Should the project be built at all?

Given his conclusion of the lack of economic feasibility, Michael asks the question: “Should the Delta project be built at all?”  But this also raises the question: Is it too late to stop it?

Michael’s cost-benefit study may be too late because AB 39, the Delta Reform Act, has already been signed into law. An official cost-benefit study by economist David Sunding of the University of California won’t be released until the Bay Delta Plan is in final form. This is unlike the high-speed rail project that has released updated cost-benefit studies as the project has evolved in its planning phase. Thus, Michael has taken it upon himself to do an up-front cost-benefit study for the benefit of the public.

The Delta Reform Act is based on the “co-equal” goals of the conservation and management of the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta ecosystem and improving the current supplies and reliability of water conveyed through the State Water Project and the federal Central Valley Project.  The Delta Plan would not “restore” the Delta because the Delta was originally an occasional inland sea that created flooding and havoc on the economy.

By adopting the co-equal goals of the Delta Plan, the state Legislature and governor have inadvertently nearly eliminated any ongoing economic consideration of the project.  The proposed Through Delta Tunnels are estimated to cost about $14 billion. The rehabilitation of the Delta ecosystem is estimated to cost about $4 billion. But the net economic feasibility — comparing costs and benefits — is about $500 million in net benefits and $1.25 billion in net costs, according to Michael’s rough study.  That means that the costs of the proposed through-Delta tunnel are about 2.5 times the benefits to both water users and to the Delta ecosystem.

Michael points out that the original Bay Delta Plan in 2006-7 called for a “$3 to $4 billion canal that would ‘restore’ water exports up to 6.5 million acre feet on average.”  An acre-foot of water is enough, for one year, to supply two urban households; or irrigate one-third of an acre of farmland.  Now, he says in emails to me: “The cost has increased 3 to 4 times, it yields one million acre feet less water in the best case scenario and water demand is declining — and planners have finally gotten real about the long-term demand trends.”

“It is completely logical that people who supported the (Delta) vision 5 years ago would oppose the plan now.  Anyone who isn’t seriously reconsidering their position in light of changed facts isn’t being rational,” says Michael.  “I am not saying that I necessarily support the idea that Southern California should write a multi-billion-dollar habitat check, either. I think taxpayers and ratepayers deserve to have an alternative explored.”

Scare tactics instead of economics

Michael further says that sloganeering and scare tactics can’t substitute for sound economics: “For four years I have said I will support a canal if the state can demonstrate that it makes sense in a real statewide benefit-cost analysis.  I would tell the Delta folks it is for the greater good of California.

“But canal and tunnel supporters just state that it is for the greater good of the state with slogans (’25 million new people’) or scare tactics (‘an earthquake will rupture the Delta levees and cause the economy to run dry!’).  Maybe, but a canal or tunnel doesn’t protect energy, transport, etc.

“They — the Delta Stewardship Council — have refused to conduct or at least release a cost-benefit analysis. Taxpayers should be outraged by that, no matter where they live.”

Are ‘co-equal goals’ and cost-benefit compatible?

Mike Wade, head of the California Farm Water Coalition, believes that the above cost-benefit study ignores that policy makers have already passed laws requiring the “co-equal goals” of reliable water supplies and ecosystem protection for the Delta.

In response to Michael’s cost-benefit study, Wade left the following comment online:

“A closer look at the two reports by UC Berkeley’s David Sunding and UOP’s Jeffrey Michael reveals that the study Sunding provides is an in-depth analysis on the economics of California water and the benefits that result from an enhanced water supply. This water supply, along with a restored Delta ecosystem, is the basis for the work currently being conducted by the Bay Delta Conservation Plan. Unfortunately, the report by Jeff Michael fails to assign any value to meeting either of the co-equal goals, which is the entire basis for the existence of BDCP.”

Of course, why have an economic cost-benefit study at all if every square peg has to fit into the round hole of “co-equal goals”? And if it doesn’t fit, then some contrivance such as “regulatory assurance” must be invented to make it fit.

‘Regulatory Assurance’

Both the Delta tunnel and ecosystem rehabilitation would probably be funded with a revenue bond paid for those who would use the water (rather than a statewide general obligation bond tapping the state general fund). A revenue bond would pay for the Delta ecosystem upgrades and tunnel by raising water rates for farmers and cities.  This is why the Delta Reform Law has “co-equal” goals.  There must be “co-equal” goals for a) Delta conservationists and b) Central Valley farmers and Southern California cities. The Delta would supply the habitat and the water; the farmers and the cities would supply most of the revenue.

To provide the revenue, however, farmers and cities have demanded “regulatory assurance.” “Regulatory assurance” is a bureaucratic term meaning that water deliveries to farmers would not be interrupted or cut back by environmental lawsuits or surprise water shut offs to save some threatened species.  Farmers need assurance that their water supplies won’t be cut back over the term of any agricultural loans.  And Southern California cities need the assurance of water deliveries before they invest further in water conservation.  Cities surrounding the Delta may also need greater assurance if they are to be forced to pay to clean up Delta water pollution due to urban runoff.

But is ‘regulatory assurance’ a ploy?

Michael says that “regulatory assurance” has emerged as a fictional device to make the tunnel project seem economically feasible.

Economist David Sunding says that, to make the tunnel project feasible, an $11 billion value has been assigned to “regulatory assurance” to close the gap between costs and benefits.

Michael suggests that it would be less costly if the Delta Tunnels were dropped from consideration altogether and the $4 billion ecosystem restoration costs were completed separately and reduced to $2 billion.  As Michael puts it:

“The BDCP envisions $4 billion in habitat investments paid for by federal and state taxpayers. So my question is: ‘could a similar $4 billion investments in habitat in a “no conveyance” alternative merit a comparable regulatory assurance from the Fish and Wildlife Service?  What about $2 billion?’”  

But if ecosystem rehabilitation were funded separately, there would no longer be “co-equal” goals.  It would be back to Northern California wanting to fund only Delta ecosystem rehabilitation and farmers — and Southern California cities only wanting to fund a tunnel for greater reliability of water deliveries in dry years. And who would pay for stand-alone ecosystem rehabilitation if the state and federal governments are both broke?

But stand-alone ecosystem rehabilitation would lower costs even if it didn’t produce greater reliability of water deliveries to farmers and cities.  But then would the project unravel politically?

Of course, if the ecosystem rehabilitation costs were lowered to, say, $2 billion, perhaps it could be funded regionally instead of statewide.

But then we’re back to the problem of what to do about the thin water storage in the state.  California has already popped for $18.7 billion in water bonds since 2000 that haven’t developed any added water storage.  These water bond projects may have been intended as a way to pre-mitigate the impacts of the Delta tunnel, mostly to Northern Californians.

The cost-benefit studies of the Delta tunnel/ecosystem rehabilitation do not consider these prior water bonds. Nor does it consider the cost of removing dams along the Klamath River in Oregon and Northern California to restore salmon runs as part of the costs or benefits.

To fund or not to fund, that is the question

Michael’s question — “Should the Tunnels be funded at all?” — should include whether the Delta habitat rehabilitation funding should be continued as well.

Slow population growth is another issue that Michael has perceptively raised.

California’s slow 0.6 percent average annual population growth over the past five years — the slowest in more than 200 years — may not be a short-term trend. California needs to be reminded of what happened when the Washington Public Power Supply System planned to build five nuclear power plants in the 1970’s and 1980’s.  By 1983, some of the projects were cancelled due to a lack of population growth and poor management. WPPSS ended up defaulting on the bonds and went bankrupt — WHOOPS!

Gov. Jerry Brown wants a massive Delta tunnel and ecosystem rehabilitation project.  Brown has delayed a vote on the $11 billion proposed state water bond until the 2014 election.  But that bond has no funding for the Delta tunnel or ecosystem in it.  It’s another “waterless” water bond going down the proverbial drain. Maybe Brown was right long ago when he embraced a “small is beautiful” political philosophy?

The only hypothetical economically feasible way to get more reliable water supplies to Southern California might be in tanker cars on the proposed bullet train.

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.

Will Southern California sell its maximum annual entitlement of 2 million acre feet of water from the State Water Project for a bundle of small water projects of uncertain yield, plus $2 billion of political pork barrel projects, if voters approve the proposed $11.1 billion Comprehensive Water Package, a bond proposal known as the “Safe, Clean, Reliable Drinking Water Supply Act of 2010”?

That is a key question for statewide voters to answer by the November 2010 election. And to do this they need to understand the package of water bills (SB1, SB 2, SB6, SB7 and SB8 from 2009) that have been cobbled together before they vote out of panic given the dire curtailment of water to Central Valley farmers and Southern California cities.

Forgetting for the moment that the state is broke, the entire approach of the $11.1 billion package of legislation is to first allocate money and then find projects to fit its major co-equal goals of Delta restoration and water supply reliability. This process is backwards from that of the Gov. Edmund “Pat” Brown era where alternative water projects were first evaluated by engineers for physical and economic feasibility, quantified for water yield, and then the best project was specifically selected and the public was asked to fund it with a bond issue.

‘Ready, shoot, aim’

We have no idea today how many, if any, of the myriad of proposed statewide water projects in the Comprehensive Water Package have any physical or economic feasibility. Rather, they are like former Gov. Jerry Brown’s failed geothermal “ghost” plants built in the mid-1980s, where the funding and political approvals preceded any idea of whether they were feasible in the first place. “Ready, shoot, aim” seems to be the panicky approach of the Comprehensive Water Package.

For example, the notion that urban Southern California wastes water by letting rainfall flow out to the ocean sounds good, but proposals to capture this water are misguided. Sure, large amounts of urban rainwater flow to the ocean. The drainage plans of most coastal cities in California were originally designed to divert rainwater to the ocean via flood control channels mostly built as jobs programs during the crisis of the Great Depression. Water and power during that era were to be supplied from far away by huge Works Progress Administration dam and hydro-power projects – not from local reservoirs and canals to capture urban runoff.

But urban runoff can’t be physically and economically captured. Where would one build the reservoirs – where houses exist today? There no longer is land available in urban cities to build another Santa Fe Dam such as currently exists in Irwindale or Prado Dam near the Corona in Southern California. Neither are there any new foothill dams that could be built like Morris Dam that is upstream from the San Gabriel River in Los Angeles County.

These are pipe dream projects that can’t possibly meet the needs of a growing population state. But such projects are apparently being considered for funding by the Comprehensive Water Package under the line-item designated for “Coastal Counties and Watersheds,” as well as other line items.

The Delta Master Veto Agency

A triangular-shaped island at the ocean mouth of many rivers is named after a similar shaped letter from the Greek alphabet – “delta.” Incremental sedimentary river deposits create a delta island or alluvial fan. The word “delta” also means the amount of change from deposits of a financial investment. But the new Comprehensive Water Package will not be incremental or gradual with respect to the change it will bring to the structure of California’s water system.

The Comprehensive Water Package creates a Delta Stewardship Council that will effectively abrogate Southern California’s existing maximum annual entitlement of two million acre feet of water from the State Water Project. It would have veto powers over the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California (MWD), the State Department of Water Resources (DWR), Westland Water District, the Sacramento Municipal Utility District (SMUD) and other water districts as to building any future reservoirs and canals. All future water infrastructure projects statewide would have to be vetted through the Delta Stewardship Council and its tentacle entities.

The package would create a seven-member Sacramento Delta Stewardship Council that would have quasi-judicial powers to balance the “co-equal” goals of “Delta restoration and water supply reliability.” The Delta Stewardship Council would consolidate the current patchwork of agencies and cities that have jurisdiction over the Delta.

A whole new state entity, the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta Conservancy would also be created under the Natural Resources Agency, to implement ecosystem restoration of the Delta. A Delta Independent Science Board would additionally be created to advise the Conservancy and Stewardship Council. And a Delta Watermaster’s office would be created and funded to assure water quality enforcement. All these new entities would be linked with a larger web of existing committees and state agencies.

The Water Package is no less than a new reorganization of state water politics and implementation with the Delta getting first dibs at water and everyone else queuing up afterward. The long-proposed Peripheral Canal to divert water around the Delta is expressly forbidden under the water bill package. Cities and farmers are hoping that by passing the water bill package that the roadblock of fixing the Delta will surmounted and the Peripheral Canal can ultimately be built. But when would that be – 2050, if ever?

And what about the problem of bait and switch? The last time Southern California got a bundle of state water projects in return for building levees in the Delta it made sure to enshrine the projects in the state Constitution so that they could not be unwound at the next session of the state Legislature. There is no such guarantee in the water bill package. The hope that the package is a prerequisite for the Peripheral Canal, Auburn Dam or other water projects is an exercise in faith.

Even if Southern California water leaders are appointed as members of the Delta Stewardship Council they effectively will end up representing the Delta, not their water ratepayers. Who would end up advocates for Southern California cities, Central Valley farmers or even the urban ecosystem? Presumably, everyone outside the Delta would end up being represented by state bureaucratic officials. The Legislature would only have authority over water projects outside the Delta that the Delta Stewardship Council did not veto.

The Stewardship Council would additionally delegate to the State Department of Fish and Game and the Water Quality Control Board the responsibility to “identify the water supply needs of the Delta Estuary.” The water supply needs of urban or agricultural users would not be on their radar screen.

Of likely concern to cities surrounding the Bay Delta is that each city would have to certify to the council that development and land use decisions are compatible with the Delta Plan, subject to an appeal process. This would usurp “home rule” for many Bay Area cities and counties. Imagine something like the Coastal Commission suddenly having jurisdiction over your city, leading many observers to believe that the package is a simple power grab.

Water officials contacted in the process of writing this article anonymously stated that their educated guess as to how much of its water entitlement might flow to Southern California after the Delta gets to trump all water needs in the state is about 25 percent (500,000 acre-feet, or enough for about 2.5 million people). On a wet year, Southern California typically draws down about 500,000 to 1 million acre-feet of water from the State Water Project. The last time the MWD drew close to its maximum entitlement was 2001, when it drew about 1.7 million acre feet of water during the California Electricity Crisis. However, Southern California’s cities could lose their potential entitlement to water for 7.5 million people overnight on the November 2010 election.

The Delta Stewardship Council would theoretically offer a fix to the political fragmentation and dysfunctional log jamming that characterizes about every issue in the state. But even though the council would have broad powers to fix the Delta, it would also have the power to veto other water projects statewide, leaving only the Delta immune from the political dysfunction that exists in California government.

The Comprehensive Water Package would not be incremental but revolutionary. In concept it would save the Delta, but it would be “every man for himself” for the rest of California, albeit with the aid of some subsidies for local water projects and $2 billion in pork barrel projects for key politicians.

20 by 2020

This package of bills calls for a 20 percent reduction in baseline daily per capita water use by the year 2020.  It also calls for the volume of agricultural water to be measured for the first time.

Perhaps of most interest to the average person, it establishes a target of 55 gallons per capita daily for residential indoor water use. Taking a shower can use 25 gallons alone.

The water bill package gives water agencies four options for complying with conservation goals: (1) 20 percent reduction in daily use; (2) 20 percent reduction in regional imports; (3) utilize performance standards for commercial, industrial and institutional users; and (4) a method to be developed by DWR by 2010.

Processed water from recycling would not be subject to conservation mandates. The problem with conservation is that it works on the state level by eliminating the need for new costly and environmentally damaging dams and canals. But on the local level conservation only depletes local groundwater basins resulting in more reliance on imported water supplies.

Delta Council as Climate Change Talisman

The rationales for saving the Delta from environmental crisis are often depicted in quasi-religious apocalyptic terms: rising sea levels that would flood the fresh water Delta with seawater; warming temperatures would mean more rain and less snow pack in the Sierras, resulting in more floods; catastrophic earthquakes could breach Delta levees resulting in seawater intrusion that would end shipments of imported water to Southern California; global warming and pollution are killing off salmon and smelt fish populations. Realistically, the water bill package would prevent none of these scenarios.

The Delta Stewardship Council would be empowered to review transportation and land- use plans for impacts on climate change. This would include compliance with California Senate Bill 375, the “anti-sprawl bill,” that diverts new growth and development away from suburbs and edge cities and toward coastal cities.

An obvious problem with all this anti-global-warming and anti-sprawl legislation is that the most abundant groundwater resources in California are located inland and not toward the coast. So reducing auto pollution by shortening auto commutes or shifting to light rail would in turn result in more dependence on imported water supplies. Life is full of trade-offs and ironies never acknowledged by environmentalists or politicians. It is nonetheless strange that such a highly touted package of water bills would result in more dependence on imported water all in the name of combating global warming.

Another problem is that during a prolonged drought existing environmental laws make urban, agricultural and recreational users curtail water usage to great hardship. But the sacrosanct natural environment cannot even be stressed or have any species of fish decline in population due to natural causes without some lawsuit alleging harm from cities or farms.

The Environmental Defense Fund’s Center for Rivers and Deltas, flush with a $100,000 blind donation in 2007 from Meg Whitman, won a court injunction against transporting water through the California Aqueduct alleging that pumps at the Harvey O. Banks Pumping Plant on the California Aqueduct were the cause of the disappearance of the Smelt. But the Smelt don’t find their habitat only near the pumps, nor do they affect them. Today, Whitman ironically is probably the only candidate for governor likely to veto the water bill package if it came across her desk on her watch.

There are other plausible reasons for the smelt’s decline, including pollution and invasive species. Prior water quality improvements in the Delta have increased the population of natural smelt predators. The Smelt, like the famous Spine Stickleback fish, could have gone into hiding to protect themselves. Cleaner Delta water could also have reduced food sources the Smelt forage on such as Krill.

The courts have never addressed the favorable treatment under California environmental laws of the natural environment to the detriment of the urban eco-system. When a dam and reservoir is built, the natural eco-system that once depended on that water is transferred downstream to an environment of urban forests, gardens and wildlife. Urban lawns, rose bushes, tree squirrels and Koi fish ponds are not valued in our culture or laws as is the Delta smelt fish, coastal sage brush and kangaroo rats. “Save the Delta” – to hell with the cities and farms seems to be the mantra.

The California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA), measures gross, not net, impacts on the environment. For example, CEQA only measures upstream gross impacts of a dam without considering any offset for the downstream transfer of vegetation and wildlife from the wilderness to cities and farms. Are commercial poppy fields or urban arboretums any less of the environment? The poppies don’t know the difference whether grown in the wild or on a horticultural operation. Once commercialized, poppies (the official state flower) will be sustainable and protected forever.

The Delta Scientific “Certainty Wallahs”

The presumption for the creation of the Delta Stewardship Council and Delta Independent Science Board is that it knows or will know what is best for the Delta environment. This is a dubious presumption, even from a scientific standpoint. No one knows, nor can they know, what the ramifications of tinkering with the Delta ecosystem would be. Moreover, scientists are being asked to make cultural and political values judgments not dispassionate science

For example, say that sending more water to cities in the southern half of the state results in more seawater intrusion to the Delta. So instead of fresh water fish and plant species we get saltwater fish and vegetation. The freshwater species don’t necessarily die off as much as their population is reduced. They are merely replaced by a different type of ecosystem. Scientists can’t tell us which ecosystem is preferable; only cultural and commercial values enshrined in law can. The public can be sold on aesthetic values of species based on visualized depictions of their plight. But what about ugly species or vegetation that sucks up too much water from its “neighbors?” Those are often dubiously labeled “invasive” or “non-native” species.

After spending billions of dollars under the water bill package on cleaning up the Delta purportedly to make it a natural aquarium we can’t be assured that the unintended consequences of the cleanup won’t alter the ecosystem deleteriously. Sociologically speaking, the ideology behind saving the Delta is more anti-business and anti-urban than it is truly scientific.

In any case there is no new cheap water.

According to water officials this writer spoke with, the water bill package and Delta Stewardship Council and Delta Plan won’t make much of a difference because there is no new cheap water that can be created, at least quickly, without a return of the monsoons that periodically fill our statewide reservoirs. If so, California might do just as well or better if it just waited for rain relief rather than rush the water bill package.

Many contend that more water has been over committed from the Bay Delta. Southern California is entitled to a maximum of 2 million of the 4 million acre-feet annually of the State Water Project (WSP) that is routed through the Delta. Four million acre-feet of water sounds like an over-commitment during a drought. But in a drought the state has the right to reduce a water agency’s allocation.  So the argument of over committal of water is specious and often used for propaganda.

As radical as the water bill package is, it cannot change our meteorological fortune or misfortune. The ancients believed that gods controlled the world. In modern-day society we believe we can magically control nature with legislation, with the same result.

A three-year drought is normal by conventional water planning standards. However, if the drought persists to, say, an eight-year cycle as it has in the past, California will be in even more of a crisis.

Fixing the Bay Delta at the cost of farms and cities may ring a death knell for California. The solution lies not in affluence removal or perhaps not even in effluence removal. The environment has always improved with affluence, not the other way around.