At a time when many Democrats and Republicans alike believe often-drought-stricken California needs more water storage projects and infrastructure, an $8.9 billion bond measure that earlier this year seemed to be a sure thing now faces a somewhat less certain fate.

The odds of passage are still strong. As a Bay Area News Group analysis noted, state records show that over the last quarter-century, voters have approved 80 percent of bonds put before them – 24 of 30.

But Proposition 3 – which was placed on the ballot after a signature-gathering campaign – is facing unexpectedly vigorous pushback on several fronts.

The strongest objections deal with the fact that unlike water bonds placed on the ballot directly by the Legislature, Proposition 3 funds wouldn’t be divvied up based on a careful evaluation process in which the merits of individual projects are rated and weighted. Instead, the ballot measure amounts to a pay-to-play initiative in which proponents of projects agreed to pay signature gatherers in support of a bond that specifies that a lengthy list of their projects will be funded.

This has led the Sierra Club of California, the League of Women Voters and Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon to formally oppose Proposition 3.

Measure depicted as favor for rich farm interests

Sierra Club executive Eric Parfrey has written scathingly of the measure as a “bailout for billionaires,” citing provisions that pay for $750 million in repairs to the Madera and Friant-Kern canals that he believes should be paid for by large agribusinesses. Other specified projects involve far smaller sums but also raise eyebrows, such as providing funds for infrastructure that critics say should be the responsibility of the giant Metropolitan Water District of Southern California.

Proponents say this criticism ignores the big-picture value of having improved water infrastructure, especially in the Central Valley.

“Everything we eat comes out of there,” said Jerry Meral, the former deputy director of the state Department of Water Resources, who has led the push for the ballot measure. “We just can’t let it go. You might also say, why should the state pay for urban water conservation? Why should the people who don’t have kids pay for schools? An agricultural water supply means we have a food supply. You have to invest in the state,” he told the Bay Area News Group.

Nevertheless, a Sacramento Bee editorial opposed Proposition 3 on the grounds that there isn’t strong evidence that it would pay for “the projects that California needs most right now, or that they couldn’t get the money elsewhere.”

But Proposition 3 also has heavyweights in its corner. The state Chamber of Commerce, labor groups and farming coalitions back the project, as does Sen. Dianne Feinstein. Some environmental groups have also endorsed the measure, most notably the Nature Conservancy.

However, Gov. Jerry Brown and Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom, the strong favorite to succeed Brown, have kept quiet.

Brown’s silence has surprised some veteran observers. He has long opposed the sorts of state borrowing that many governors found unobjectionable, and as a result California now spends considerably less on bond service as a percentage of its general fund budget than it did under Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Voters have approved $31 billion in bonds since 2000

Yet this doesn’t mean the state has skimped on bonds. The Legislative Analyst’s Office reports the state has approved about $31 billion in general obligation bonds for water and environmental projects since 2000, with nearly a third of the bonds as yet unspent. In 2014, voters approved a $7.5 billion water bond, and just in the June primary, another water bond – this one for $4.1 billion – was backed by voters.

Brown has been joined in skepticism about new state borrowing by those who question why the state would use bonds paid off over 30- or 40-year spans in an era in which the Legislature and Brown have been able to salt away more than $15 billion in state reserve funds because of swelling revenues.

The total cost of repaying Proposition 3 has been estimated at about $17.2 billion, slightly less than twice as much as the face value of the bond measure.

As of the last campaign reporting deadline, Yes on Proposition 3 reported $4.7 million in contributions, mostly from farming groups. No on Proposition 3 reported no donations.

Drought-busting levels of rain and snow have put pressure to lift emergency restrictions on usage, but California regulators declined to ease up on the longstanding curbs.

“Amid the ongoing succession of storms, water managers up and down the state are urging regulators in Sacramento to permanently cancel historic, emergency drought rules that have been in place for 18 months,” U-T San Diego reported late last month. “It’s an escalation of their ongoing opposition to these restrictions, which already have been eased considerably since homeowners and businesses were first forced to cut consumption by a statewide average of 25 percent. California doesn’t have an official definition for statewide drought, leaving it up to the governor’s discretion on when to announce an end to that designation.”

Swift, uneven progress

But in a new report, the State Water Resources Control Board insisted that the drought’s persistent impact had to be mitigated further before any changes could be considered. “Some reservoirs remain critically low and groundwater storage remains depleted in many areas due to the continued impact of prolonged drought,” they concluded, according to the Sacramento Bee. “Precipitation cannot be counted on to continue, and snowpack levels, while above average for the current time of year, are subject to rapid reductions as seen in 2016 and before.” While the extraordinary rules imposed to conserve water were on track to expire at the end of this month, the board planned to extend them 270 days into the future.

The caution struck a contrast to the swiftness of California’s transformation from dry to wet. “According to the U.S. drought monitor website,” HotAir noted, “there are no areas of exceptional drought left in the state.” Updated data, the site observed, “indicates that one year ago 64 percent of the state was considered to be under either extreme or exceptional drought conditions, the two highest categories. Now, largely thanks to the storms over the past month, that figure has dropped to 2 percent.”

Continued challenges

Water districts have now had to scramble to figure out how to store what could be excess water if the new trends continue. Although the pathway to new storage initiatives has been cleared and funded, the state’s bureaucratic process will add extra time. “In 2014, voters approved a $7.5 billion water bond, including $2.7 billion for storage projects, to provide funding to water projects and programs throughout the state,” KXTV recalled. “Since then, government agencies across the state have been developing the process for accepting proposals.” This month, the station added, “the Water Commission will consider bids on numerous water storage projects across the state.”

And milder drought conditions have persisted. “Overall, the monitor … showed 51 percent of California remains in some form of drought, but that’s down from just over 57 percent last week and compares with 81 percent three months ago,” CNBC reported. And in a twist adding an unexpected layer of politics to the fraught question of resource management in the most beleaguered parts of the state, some Central Valley water officials became the focus of a misspending scandal. “An irrigation district in Central California’s prime farming region gave its employees free housing, interest-free loans and credit cards that the workers used to buy tickets for concerts and professional sports games, possibly breaking the law,” said state officials according to NBC Bay Area. “Employees at Panoche Water District based in Firebaugh used the credit cards to buy season tickets to Raiders and Oakland A’s games and attend a Katy Perry concert, officials said.”

The long view

Meanwhile, Gov. Jerry Brown has kept a focus on what regulatory framework will persist even after all drought conditions have been adequately mitigated. “Brown has asked the state agency to design new conservation rules for water districts that will stay in place regardless of whether California is in drought,” according to U-T San Diego. “In the long run, the governor and state regulators are moving forward with their plan to establish permanent usage budgets tailored to each water district, as well as a suite of other regulations governing water consumption. The new rules are expected to include caps for both indoor use and outdoor water use, taking into consideration differences in weather patterns and other factors from one geographic region to another.”

Aerial view of Lake Shasta & dam with low water.

What’s more important: High-speed rail or water? Proponents of a proposed ballot measure would force voters to choose just that.

The measure would redirect $8 billion in unsold high-speed rail bonds and $2.7 billion from the 2014 water bond to fund new water storage projects, while restructuring the oversight of those projects and prioritizing water usage in the state Constitution — a move critics say will be confusing and prone to legal challenges.

Proponents of the measure are trying to capitalize on the unpopularity of the high-speed rail project and the popularity of the water bond to substantially boost the funding for water storage projects, which they say weren’t adequately funded by the 2014 bond.

“What this initiative does is pick up where (the water bond) left off and fully funds the other necessary projects that are widely accepted as needing to be done,” said Aubrey Bettencourt, the executive director of the California Water Alliance. “There’s no new projects listed in our initiative.”

A Hoover Institution poll late last year said that 53 percent of respondents would favor scrapping high-speed rail in favor of water storage projects, with just 31 percent against. The water bond passed with 67 percent of the vote.

Constitutional Amendment

The measure would also amend the state Constitution to prioritize the usage of water, making domestic usage the most important, then irrigation and then presumably environmental usage (which is not explicitly stated).

Bettencourt says the new language is necessary to straighten out ambiguity in the current law, where “the Legislature has created more than one first-priority use of water, leaving it to the courts to decide.”

But Tim Johnson, president and CEO of the California Rice Commission, says the proposed language “is extraordinarily unclear, very confusing,” and will likely end up in court. To illustrate, Johnson posed an ambiguous hypothetical situation: What happens when a farmer uses water to decompose straw, is that agricultural or environmental?

Power Shift

The new water agency would divert decision-making authority on these water storage projects away from gubernatorial appointees, as mandated in the water bond, to a nine-member panel elected by the water districts of the four regions with one at-large member, which would likely shift power to agricultural interests over environmentalists.

Johnson argues that the water bond water commission is set to allocate funds for storage projects around 2017 and a new structure would only delay the start of those projects.

“It’s a totally different standard and a totally different group of people to present it to,” said Johnson.

Johnson added that the measure is supported by just a few central valley “fat cats” who only want more water at the expense of everyone else. Bettencourt said there was broad coalition of supporters, with only a few larger farm interests and many small farmers.

Since the beginning of the year, the California Water Alliance’s initiative fund has received $321,000 from donors. Funding came from 16 donors, with an average contribution of $20,000. Four contributions were under $10,000 and one large donation of $50,000 was from a political action committee that’s received many small donations.

The measure is sponsored by Sen. Bob Huff, R-San Dimas, Board of Equalization member George Runner and the California Water Alliance.

An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated that there was no available campaign finance data for the measure’s proponents. We regret this error.

Although some lawmakers advocated new funds for projects that could pump up the Golden State’s access to potable water, and some municipalities have considered revisiting old methods to do so, the state’s demand has threatened to outstrip supply.

Under chairwoman Felicia Marcus, the State Water Resources Control Board has seen some success in curtailing water use. Nevertheless, the Associated Press reported, in a recent hearing Marcus and the board signaled a determination to restrict Californians’ consumption even more:

“The board has the sweeping power to define when water use is unreasonable, and it could eventually expand the definition to include using drinking water to maintain golf courses and cemeteries. Marcus said the board would likely take smaller steps first, such as prohibiting decorative outdoor water fountains.”

So far, the board has used mandatory data reporting requirements to measure the impact of restrictions on lawn watering and car washing that it first imposed over the summer. CBS Sacramento reported, “More than 400 local water departments must report their residential per-capita water monthly water use compared with the year before.”

As the network noted, although those restrictions were pegged to an April expiration date, the board indicated it will consider renewing them as part of the expanded rules that could include the new table water and hotel linen regulations.

Alternate approaches

Meanwhile, in the California Legislature, a new proposal has been floated to put more funds into capturing stormwater for residential use. As Sacramento’s Capital Public Radio confirmed, some stormwater funding already made its way into California’s landmark water bond, Proposition 1, which voters passed last November. The bond was a top priority for Gov. Jerry Brown.

But State Sen. Bob Hertzberg, D-Van Nuys, argued for an expansion of those plans. “We spend so much money and have such environmental impact by moving water around the state, when right in front of our noses there’s a lot of opportunity to capture it,” he told CPR.  “So we’re looking at best practices and trying to figure out new policies we can develop to make that happen.”

One approach that hasn’t made it onto the statewide agenda, however, shows more immediate promise: desalination. A relatively old technology, the process of purifying ocean water started returning to favor recently among some cities and scientists.

Coastal cities including Santa Barbara, Carlsbad and Huntington Beach have all turned their attention to using desalination plants, the Wall Street Journal reported. Though costly — desalination consumes a great deal of electricity — the plants have offered a fairly quick emergency fix in the past.

In Santa Barbara’s case, noted the Journal, “desalinated water will cost about a third more than the city’s imported freshwater supplies.” But “Mayor Helene Schneider said other options, including more conservation, have been exhausted for the city of 90,000.”

Daunting trend lines

Despite Californians’ success in approaching the state’s water conservation goals, drought projections have officials and analysts worried that the effort won’t be able to keep pace with the state’s long-term population growth.

Though on track to lower consumption 20 percent by 2020, the Sacramento Bee reported, water agencies determined that in 15 years use will have increased 16 percent. The California Department of Finance, the Bee noted, estimated that the state population will grow by 14 percent over the same period — rising to 44 million residents, demanding an additional 1 million acre-feet of water.

Thanks in part to Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., Congress approved the outflow of funds, roughly half of which is intended to assist California’s parched Central Valley. As the Los Angeles Times reported, $22.6 million in federal dollars will go to “water projects throughout the western states, and California may be able to get some of that funding through a competitive grant program.” All told, the money represents a ratcheting up of support, but hardly a silver bullet.

Jewell and Brown set expectations accordingly. Jewell admitted the sum would make a difference but was “not going to fix things.” Brown called it “an important indicator that California and the federal government are good partners.”

In fact, the competitive grant program was not designed to furnish direct drought relief. Instead, the Silicon Valley Business Journal reported, it will fund “a so-called water smart program, which gives farmers and other residents information on personal water use and education on recycling and reduction practices. Jewell said California has a strong chance of obtaining the grants due to the state’s dire water situation.”

Left unsaid was how quickly the water smart program would actually make an impact on that situation.

A light touch

The relatively weak federal response reflected a belief among policymakers, including Brown, that California’s drought may be lengthy, but it is not a full-blown catastrophe. Calling himself “reluctant to expand the coercive power of state authority,” Brown claimed voluntary conservation had helped California manage the problem “pretty well,” according to the Sacramento Bee.

At the start of last year, the Bee observed, Brown called for Californians to cut their water use by a combined 20 percent statewide, a goal met in Dec. 2014.

As for the federal funds going directly to the state of California, those resources also have been allocated toward projects that will benefit the state more over the long term than the immediate term. Brown explained the funds, like those approved by voters last November in the $7.5 billion Proposition 1 water bond, “were important for conservation projects, which include the building of dams and groundwater management,” according to the Business Journal.

Building on bonds

As CalWatchdog.com reported, Brown has put long-term conservation projects at the center of his final term in office. During the run-up to last year’s election, he did next to no campaigning on his own behalf, leading instead with ads for the water bond that Prop. 1 created and the rainy-day fund set up by Proposition 2.

In the month of October alone, Brown spent some $13.5 million promoting the two propositions, both of which voters approved.

Standing beside Jewell, Brown took the opportunity to reinforce his message. “We have to use water more efficiently,” he said. “We can’t waste, we have to recycle, we have to store and save and deliver our water very carefully.”

Brown emphasized there are few short-term solutions beside conservation. “Everybody is running around saying, ‘Build a dam here, eliminate an endangered species there,'” he said. “It’s not going to produce any more water this year. The only person who can produce water is Mother Nature.”

That’s the unasked question as voters head to the polls next Tuesday to decide the fate of Proposition 1, the $7.1 billion state water bond.

Earlier this month, the California Supreme Court green-lighted the state’s high-speed rail project. Although questions remain about the project’s long-term legal viability, as CalWatchdog.com reported.

But the ruling also cast a pall over other bond measures because it’s not clear how literally the exact wording of such measures must be interpreted. In a September argument to the court to stop the project, the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association argued, according to its website, “The current plan for high-speed rail is nearly twice as expensive as promised and the projected travel times and fairs have nearly doubled.”

In the wake of the court decision, the Jarvis President Jon Coupal brought up an new concern. He wrote on Oct. 26 that the court ruling “raises the specter that, no matter what a bond proposal promises about what will be built with the bond proceeds, those promises are meaningless. In other words, when California voters are asked to approve a bond, are they just approving debt for any purpose at all? This is the very definition of a blank check.”

As a result, he said, “the opponents of any bond proposal, at either the state or local level, need only point to High-Speed Rail to remind voters that promises in a voter approved bond proposal are meaningless and unenforceable.”

With just days to go before the election, Prop. 1 has mustered broad but probably shallow support for its massive expenditures. Although water policy has emerged as one area where legislators were able to find bipartisan ground this year, serious questions remain as to what voters will be approving with a Yes vote. And by some measures, those questions cannot even be answered until after the fact.

Spreading concern

Analysts and media reports have sounded alarms over Prop. 1’s deep ambiguity. The terms delimiting the high-speed rail project were clear and concise — although, as noted above, that didn’t matter much for the implementation.

But the language describing the scope and purpose of the water bond doesn’t even try to be precise, and is vague and uncertain from the get-go.

As the San Francisco Chronicle reported, opponents of the measure charge the bond’s language has been left vague “by design.”

The Chronicle agreed, concluding the “potential effects and implementation” of the big measure “are still hazy.”

Too late?

However, complex legal arguments are hard to press on voters, especially this lately in the election season.

Prop. 1’s bipartisan support also has muted opposition. Brown’s own re-election campaign largely has consisted of TV ads of him touting Prop. 1 and its companion, Proposition 2, the Rainy Day Budget Stabilization Act. It’s a calculated plan to emphasize his “good government” intentions, while ignoring his Republican opponent, Neel Kashkari.

The latest PPIC poll, taken a week ago, showed Prop. 1 spouting a high lead, 56 percent to 32 percent. It showed the proposition tied among Republicans, 43-43. But it enjoyed hefty support among Democrats, 68-20, and Independents, 56-23.

According to Ballotpedia, the Yes on Prop. 1 campaign has raised $13 million and spent almost all of it. The No on Prop. 1 campaign has raised only $89,100.

Future bonds

Where the Supreme Court decision on high-speed rail could come into effect is with future bond campaigns. Bonds usually pass. But in recent years two bonds have failed:

• 2000: Proposition 16, $220 million for crime labs.
• 2006: Proposition 81, $600 million for libraries.

Indeed, even Prop. 1A, the 2008 rail bond, passed with just 52.7 percent of the vote, 47.3 percent against. It’s unlikely it could pass today.

Prop. 1, after all, started out as a $11 billion water bond that twice was postponed by the Legislature, in 2010 and 2012, due to fears voters would drown it.

And all that happened before the Supreme Court certified that bond language is meaningless.

As he gears up for the final stretch of his bid for an unprecedented fourth term in office, Brown has chosen to focus closely on his own fortunes and his own political brand. Rather than stumping around the Golden State, as Democrats have hoped, Brown has largely bowed out of his party’s push to reclaim a legislative supermajority in Sacramento.

Bucking the trend

Despite Democrats’ dominant position, the party’s worries have extended to the top of its state leadership. The new state Senate leader, Kevin de Leon, D-Los Angeles, recently revealed his concerns to the Los Angeles Times. Although he did not shed any light on party leaders’ “negotiations” with the Brown camp, de Leon admitted he was “actively pursuing the governor to make appearances.” Sizing up his party’s challenges, de Leon said the upcoming election was “going to be the most challenging in more than a decade, so we absolutely have our work cut out for us.”

Democrats have fretted this year over a series of scandals, disagreements and internal divisions that have blunted the force of their policy agenda. On a growing number of issues, especially the influence of teachers’ unions, Democrats have taken contrasting positions.

The race for Superintendent of Public Instruction pits two Democrats — incumbent Tom Torlakson and challenger Marshall Tuck — against one another in an officially nonpartisan contest that has unofficially split key figures within the party into two surprisingly hostile camps.

In that kind of uncertain atmosphere, the rallying influence of a strong governor with substantial popular support would be a much-needed political balm. Brown, however, has not governed predictably, and his sometimes idiosyncratic approach toward his own party has created discomfort among Democrats who now must plead for his public support.

In advancing California’s high-speed rail project, for instance, Brown provoked irritation and concern among progressive environmentalists by diverting cap-and-trade fee revenue away from climate mitigation efforts toward the train’s infrastructure requirements — an investment that would not lessen carbon emissions for perhaps decades.

In light of Brown’s apparent determination to stray from the reliable ideological confines of his party’s far left, or its more moderate pro-business center, his hesitancy to take to the stump this election season makes his relative silence understandable.

Handpicked exceptions

Reluctance notwithstanding, Brown has chosen to take a handful of carefully chosen actions in the run-up to November. Perhaps most notably, although he has not taken to the stump on her behalf, Brown has pointedly endorsed Libby Schaaf, a candidate in the crowded race to replace Oakland Mayor Jean Quan. (Voters have soured on the incumbent Quan, but her challengers have failed to catch voters’ enthusiasm.) Schaaf, a councilwoman in the city where Brown was a popular mayor for eight years, also worked for Brown.

As the San Francisco Chronicle pointed out, Brown’s past endorsements have not necessarily made or broken the campaigns of candidates he supported. Still, at a time when his public favor is so strongly coveted, Brown’s choice to endorse Schaaf underscored his approach to November and beyond. Close friends and allies will be embraced, if somewhat quietly. Others may have to wait for a gift that will never come.

Meanwhile, Brown has turned his eye on his legacy and the state’s future. Sidestepping a brewing scandal involving PG&E’s cozy ties to regulators, Brown announced he returned campaign contributions from six of the utility’s officials.

And in his first ad buy of the season, Brown has chosen to push Propositions 1 and 2, the ballot measures that would secure his sought-after water bond and rainy-day fund. In the ads, Brown does not even mention his bid for reelection.

The most immediate consequence of the deal will be seen on the ballot itself, where a more ambitious 2009 initiative will be swapped out. That measure exceeded $11 billion. It was loaded, as the Desert Sun observed, with “unrelated pork” that “squeaked” the deal through in Sacramento — but caused its postponement on the ballot two separate times.

Political stars align

The embarrassing experience led Brown to propose a “no pork, no frills” bond measure that wouldn’t top $6 billion. In a public letter, Brown slammed the old measure as an irresponsible effort that would impose “enormous costs … $750 million a year for 30 years,” at the expense of “schools, health care and public safety.” What’s more, Brown warned, California’s annual expenditures for bond debt service already approached $8 billion from the general fund.

Often, when legislators balk at a no-pork proposal, they secure special deals as the price of their vote. In this instance, however, legislators representing rural districts — where state Republicans still maintain some clout — negotiated for additional funds specifically targeted at voters’ own water priorities. The price tag on those objectives raised the total bond amount by $1.5 billion above Brown’s number, to $7.5 billion. In a bid to cement his election-year reputation as a Democrat capable of transcending partisanship to tackle big projects, Brown swallowed the increases, and the deal was sealed.

A round of political celebrations

Leading Democrats took the opportunity to cast the compromise as a measure of their own party’s future ambitions. “If we can get water done in California with its history,” said state Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg, D-Sacramento, “we can get just about anything else done, and we will.”

Not to be left out, rural California legislators celebrated the deal. State Sen. Tom Berryman, R-Modesto, took to the Modesto Bee to praise central state lawmakers for “sticking together” with farm bureaus and agriculture groups. The resulting leverage, Berryman wrote, led to key Central Valley objectives like the protection of water rights, watersheds and so-called “cross-connectivity,” a feature of interconnected water infrastructure that allows resources to be directed to especially drought-stricken areas.

What’s more, rural legislators increased the amount Brown had offered for water storage. From an initial $2 billion, that number rose to $2.7 billion. The higher number was 36 percent of the total bond, as Berryman underscored. Republicans had pushed to guarantee that storage projects would be funded well enough to weather any unfavorable budgetary or political changes in Sacramento.

Lingering questions

Speaking for many in Sacramento, Assemblyman Adam Gray, D-Merced, said the deal “lays a foundation to meet California’s water needs and gives us the resources we need to ensure our dire drought conditions do not repeat themselves in the future.” Nevertheless, Prop. 1 hasn’t appeased every interest group. Faced with falling aquifer levels brought on by California’s historic drought, some legislators and activists have demanded that attention be turned to groundwater regulation. 

With the legislative season drawing to a close, however, little momentum has built up for the two current bills that would address groundwater. The state Senate and the Assembly each has an option — SB 1168, advanced by Fran Pavley, D-Agoura Hills; and AB 1739, from Assemblyman Roger Dickinson, D-Sacramento. The bills essentially are identical.

The biggest damper on the bond victory, however, has little to do with Sacramento politics. Voters will have to consider the big cash outlays of Prop. 1 at a time when California has precious little water to go around.

With the drought still drying up the state, the California Legislature and Gov. Jerry Brown Wednesday poured out a $7.5 billion water bond that includes $2.7 billion for water storage. If voters give their approval this November, this will be the first bond in 50 years to include water storage.

The storage is significant because, from 1971 to 2014, California voters passed 21 water bonds totaling $35.9 billion without any water storage. Paraphrasing poet Samuel T. Coleridge, California had “bonds, bonds, water bonds, but not a drop of water to drink.”

The new bond passed in the Assembly by a vote of 77 to 2 and in the state Senate by 37 to 0.  Legislators in the Assembly broke into applause after the vote.

Said Republican Leader Bob Huff of Brea, “It was real critical to get a bond that actually helped fund two reservoirs.  We’ve had a lot of bonds in the last 15 years that haven’t had any storage, so we finally have a water bond that has water in it.”

Added Assembly Speaker Toni Atkins, D-San Diego:

“In this bond we make the biggest investment in water storage in decades. We make a major investment in ensuring clean, sustainable groundwater, and we make a major investment in our rivers, streams, and watersheds that will help with our water needs, and provide important environmental benefits as well.  With this bond we harness innovative technology, we anticipate the challenges that future droughts may pose, and we create jobs.”

First look

The new water bond is Assembly Bill 1471. Here’s a first look at its contents:

• The $7.12 billion bond will replace the $11.1 billion Proposition 43 bond approved for the ballot in 2010 but, but delayed by the Legislature that year and in 2012 because there was little chance voters would approve it during tough economic times.
• $425 million in existing water bond funding will be folded into the new bond. That will run the total of the bond, if it’s approved, to $7.5 billion.
• $2.7 billion will be allocated for “surface water and groundwater” storage projects.
• It creates a nine-member California Water Council to be appointed by the governor to oversee the selection of sites for new dams and reservoirs.
• Annual principal and interest payments on the bond “would equate to about $490 million” from the general fund. That could become a major factor during the next recession as the new bond payments would have to come from cuts in other programs, or tax increases.
• The new bond does not contain the $250 million in funding in Section 79757 of the 2010 Water bond to remove five dams along the Klamath River that flows from Oregon into California.

Restore the Delta opposed water for the Delta

Opposition includes Restore the Delta, which objected to the bond because it was not “tunnel neutral.” The group opposes Brown’s plan to build two tunnels under the Delta to keep separate ocean water from inland (unsalty) water.

Restore the Delta also didn’t like that the bond would provide $200 million for the Wildlife Conservation Board to buy water from willing sellers for the benefit of migratory birds and wildlife refuges.  But Restore the Delta believes the same water to be bought for wildlife eventually could be pumped through the proposed Twin Tunnels.

Said Restore the Delta Executive Director Barbara Barrigan-Parrilla, “It contains false protections for the Delta, and we call upon legislators, especially those representing the Delta, to vote against it. We are not fooled, and this bond will become a referendum for the tunnels. That is not going to advance the water solutions we need.”

All that remains to be seen is if the voters can gulp down a $7.5 billion water bond with water storage in it for the first time in almost 50 years.

Negotiations continued late into Tuesday night after Republicans rejected a $7.2 billion measure containing $2.5 billion for storage. That amount has since risen to $2.7 billion, enough to convince Republicans who have insisted on enough money to construct dams and reservoirs allowing California to withstand withering droughts like the one currently afflicting the state.

“Yes, there’s a deal,” said Senate Minority Leader Bob Huff, R-Diamond Bar.

And above whatever is spent on storage, the rest of what’s in the bond, as in Prop. 43 and the other (now defunct) proposals, is pork.

Which raises a question: Why not trim down the project to $3 billion for storage and build it just from the general fund? These projects take years to get going. So how about $500 million a year from the general fund for six years, the money taken by cutting waste in a budget that is $108 billion for fiscal 2014-15, and will be even higher in future years? Surely, 0.5 percent waste could be found, and cut.

But that’s not how California does things. Instead, the bond, whatever the amount is, and assuming voters pass it, will be paid down over 30 years. With interest, that means the total cost will be double the actual construction costs.

That’s why I call bonds “delayed tax increases.” Remember all those bonds voters passed a decade ago — for water (not storage), stem-cell research, schools? When the bill came due, taxes were raised $7 billion with Proposition 30 in 2012.

Finally, why not use this as an opportunity to privatize the entire water system? The new companies that run it would raise private capital to fund system upgrades — while also cutting overall rates because the private sector is far more efficient than the government sector.

The current water system is a kind of soggy DMV — politicized, inefficient, expensive.

Put Google and Apple in charge of the water system, and see rates paid by consumers drop as fast as computing costs.