The California Water Commission’s recent

Yet after harsh droughts for much of this century, state voters were ready for a new direction in 2014. They approved Proposition 1, a measure placed on the ballot by the Legislature which allowed for the issuing of up to $7.1 billion in state bonds for water infrastructure projects. After a lengthy review process, nearly 40 percent of these funds were allocated by the water commission last week for eight projects with the potential to add enough water capacity to serve more than 5 million households a year.

But skeptics have already made the case that by far the single biggest project – the Sites Reservoir in rural Colusa County north of Sacramento – actually suffered a setback in the water commission’s deliberations.

If built as envisioned, the project by itself would have been responsible for more than 60 percent of additional water storage statewide. Yet after the complex “public benefit” assessments that water commissioners used to decide how much each proposal got in bond funds, only $816 million was designated for the $5.2 billion Sites project – much less than advocates hoped. This means at the least that local water agencies and their ratepayers will have to pony up more more than they had hoped for construction.

This led Jim Watson, general manager of the Sites Project Authority, to tell the Sacramento Bee that it was possible that major changes lay ahead. If participating water agencies balk at higher costs, in the “worst case, we could build a smaller reservoir,” he said.

Commission, regulators differ on water availability

Yet the Sites Reservoir’s prospects are complicated by other factors as well. Key details of the reservoir’s construction plan have so far faced little direct criticism from environmentalists – perhaps surprising for what would be the biggest new reservoir to be built in California since the 1970s.

But as a Bee analysis noted, some environmentalists question the basic wisdom of the project. They cite the schism between the Water Commission’s conclusion that Sites could divert 500,000 acre-feet of water from the nearby Sacramento River each year and warnings from some state regulators that less water – not more – should be diverted from the river and the ecologically fragile Sacramento–San Joaquin River Delta (pictured).

One more obstacle also has less to do with Sites itself than the state’s fraught water policy fights. Critics of Gov. Jerry Brown’s California WaterFix plan – meant to shore up the state’s north-south water conveyance system – see Sites as an integral and thus objectionable part of Brown’s proposal.

The $17 billion project would build two 40-foot-wide tunnels to pump water from the Sacramento River some 35 miles south, where it would reach the water distribution network that allows wetter Northern California to provide much of the water used in desert-like Southern California.

The project appeared to be on the ropes until April, when the giant Metropolitan Water District of Southern California voted to commit its member agencies to covering $10.8 billion of the WaterFix tab – nearly two-thirds the total cost.

Brown is trying to win final approval of the project before leaving office in January. But Northern California environmental groups, local water agencies and farming industry groups are in a pitched battle to stall any final decision until after a new governor is elected.

Both remaining gubernatorial candidates – heavily favored Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, and Republican businessman John Cox of Rancho Santa Fe – are highly unlikely to embrace WaterFix if elected. Newsom thinks a smaller project makes more sense, and Cox is flatly opposed, according to the Restore The Delta website, which tracks candidates’ remarks on Delta issues.

By Wayne Lusvardi

Yesterday U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., responded to a Republican-backed water bill stalled in the U.S. Senate with a deal that might end up as a pact with the water devil for farmers and water agencies.

Feinstein included provisions in an amended Senate Appropriations agriculture and energy bill to possibly provide more certainty of water supplies for Central Valley farmers.

Feinstein also surprisingly dangled the carrot of an expedited federal review for approval of the proposed Sites Reservoir in Colusa County. Water for the Sites Reservoir would be diverted from the Sacramento River.

Stalled House Bill Would Repeal Feinstein’s 2009 Water Bill

The House bill that is stalled in the U.S. Senate, H.R. 1837 by Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Visalia., would have repealed Feinstein’s 2009 San Joaquin River Restoration Act, H.R. 146.

Feinstein’s 2009 bill took water allocations from farmers and transferred them to commercial fishing, recreational and real estate interests in northern California under the guise of environmental restoration.

Her 2009 bill also required future renewal of agricultural water contracts to go through an environmental review process. That would be like farmers and water agencies having to deal with the water devil by having to pay for contrived environmental mitigations payouts to so-called “stakeholders.”

The Apparent Deal at Hand

What is apparently on the bargaining table now is a trade of expedited federal review of a new proposed water storage reservoir and possible greater certainty of farm water in return for keeping the provisions of Feinstein’s 2009 bill intact. As it is often said, the devil is in the details.

Feinstein’s amendments to the Senate’s appropriations bill would:

* Provide for a six-month study by the Department of the Interior on ways to bring about additional farm water deliveries;

* “Urge” the Department of Interior to “facilitate and expedite” transfers of federal Central Valley Project water to farmers; and

* Expedite the Federal review for the new proposed Sites Reservoir.

A Deal with the Devil? 

The critical question with such a deal: Is it a pact made with the Water Devil — a bargain done for present gain without regard to future cost or consequences?

Would farmers and water agencies be willing to incur huge future environmental liabilities on the flimsy promise that federal agencies would comply with being “urged” to fast-track water transfers and review of a new proposed reservoir?  Why would federal agencies need “urging” to fast track review of a new dam when California only has a half-year of water storage capacity in its present water system?  Wouldn’t California’s thin water storage capacity be enough of an emergency to rush reviews?

And what would prevent such guarantees included in an agricultural and energy bill from being easily overturned? What would hold both parties to their part of the bargain in the long term?  California water history indicates that water deals obtained by “force and/or fraud” are bound to unravel while those obtained by “consent of the governed” are more lasting.

And why would farmers and water agencies be willing to deal with the Water Devil of environmental reviews of their water contract renewals when the outcome of the Department of Interior study six months down the road is uncertain?

Even Democratic Congressman Jim Costa of agricultural Fresno is cited as a backer of the “more aggressive House proposal,” HR 1837, rather than Feinstein’s deal.  However, Costa also said Feinstein’s deal was “helpful.”

Nunes said he would not reject Feinstein’s deal on its face but wanted greater assurances.

Maybe a deal can be struck now that negotiations have been re-opened.  But it is an election year for Feinstein. And that may mean floating up a deal for farmers and water agencies that is meant to buy votes.  Feinstein’s deal would not repeal her one-sided 2009 water bill that was ramrodded through Congress by force and fraud instead of consent of the governed.

‘Force, Fraud or Consent of the Governed?’

The Sacramento Bee described the pending Senate agricultural and energy appropriations bill as a “must pass” piece of legislation to keep the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and U.S. Bureau of Reclamation funded for 2013.  The 2013 fiscal year begins July 1.

It appears that Feinstein is back to the devilish use of “force and fraud” rather than obtaining the “consent of the governed.”  But there still is a small window of time to cut a deal for mutual benefit.