The long-expected showdown between the Trump administration and the state of California over water, farmers and the Central Valley appears to be imminent. On. Aug. 17, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke issued a memorandum declaring his staff had 15 days to draft a plan that would increase water for the region’s agricultural industry by reinterpreting relevant federal policies and laws and by targeting “unacceptable conditions” advocated by the state of California.

Zinke specifically cited the need to “streamline” the process under which the Endangered Species Act (ESA) and the National Environmental Policy Act are considered and invoked in Central Valley decisions. He wrote that this has prevented long-term changes in federal water decision-making.

Behind the bureaucratic language, it appears the Trump administration is taking dead aim at broad water policies that Central Valley House Republicans like Kevin McCarthy and Devin Nunes have long said valued the interests of declining fish populations in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta over the interests of the region’s farmers, who have made the Central Valley the nation’s agricultural breadbasket.

But even if the Zinke deadline is met and the Interior Department has new water allocation rules and policies in place by the Sept. 1 deadline, quick change seems unlikely. That’s because environmental groups which have fought previous changes sought by the previous Republican presidents, in particular George W. Bush, have long found judges to be sympathetic to their interpretation of the ESA. A significant number of moderate GOP lawmakers also oppose major changes in existing green regulations.

The green coalition contends that the health of salmon and Delta smelt in Central Valley waterways and rivers is a proxy for the health of Northern California’s ecosystem. Greens say that giving more water to farmers by diverting some of the fresh water now pumped into the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta could lead to a disaster that affects the whole state – very much including the 19 million residents who deeply rely on water from the rest of the state that’s distributed by the giant Metropolitan Water District of Southern California.

Trump’s promises to Central Valley farmers during an August 2016 campaign appearance in the region foreshadowed Zinke’s order. But a more specific, recent cause may have been farmers’ complaints about the California State Water Resources Board, which took two days of public testimony last week on its plan to increase water pumped into the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta from February to June to shore up endangered salmon.

Farmers, allies also weigh court challenges

Just as environmentalists threaten legal action over how federal decisions affect Central Valley water use, those aligned with farmers vow court fights over the proposed state policy change.

“If they vote to take our water, this does not end there,” state Sen. Anthony Cannella, R-Modesto, told the Associated Press. “We will be in court for 100 years.”

While Trump was nearly doubled up in 2016 California voting by Democrat Hillary Clinton, he ran far better in farm regions. He won easily in the two counties with the state’s largest agricultural economies, taking Kern County by 55 percent to 40 percent and Tulare County by 53 percent to 41 percent.

A series of budget bills are a great example of the truism that Emanuel had detailed. In early April, for instance, Gov. Jerry Brown had announced in a statement the end to emergency water-use restrictions (in all but four counties) that had been implemented as a result of the five-year drought. That relaxation of state-mandated water-conservation rules was expected after a season of record rainfall and floods in much of the state.

But Brown also noted that climate change remains a major threat and that another drought could be right around the corner. Water officials concurred.

“The statewide emergency clearly is over, but it makes sense to continue to assist areas where emergency drinking water projects are still needed in hard-hit areas. We also understand the need for continued water waste prohibitions and reporting requirements as a ‘bridge’ to permanent measures under the long-term conservation framework issued in final form today,” according a statement from the Association of California Water Agencies.

Indeed, the governor’s conservation ideas are now included in a package of water-related trailer bills. Trailer bills implement the already passed state budget, and are supposed to be technical in nature. But governors often use these bills to quietly pass substantive measures – and to do so without full hearings and vetting. In this case, three bills, by Assembly member Laura Friedman, D-Glendale, make permanent a variety of wide-ranging conservation edicts.

For instance, Assembly Bill 1667 “applies the requirement to adopt an agricultural water management plan (AWMP) to all agricultural water suppliers,” according to the official bill analysis. It also “applies agricultural water supplier efficient water management practices … to all agricultural water suppliers (and) requires AWMPs to have a drought plan.”

AB1668 “creates a new drought response plan by making numerous changes to water supply planning and drought planning to incorporate climate change, enhance water supply analysis, and strengthen the enforceability of urban water management plans … and drought contingency planning.” AB1669 requires the State Water Resources Control Board and the Department of Water Resources “to adopt long-term standards for urban water conservation and water use.”

Not all water officials are supportive of the approach. “Governor Brown’s water legislation is seeking to give unlimited power and control, minus any oversight or accountability, to an agency with the competency of Caltrans and the compassion of the Franchise Tax Board,” said Brett Barbre, vice president of the Municipal Water District of Orange County and a director of the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California. The fear is the bills would give state agencies permanent drought-style emergency authority to demand water-use cutbacks on municipalities and businesses.

This certainly jibes with the governor’s stated goal of making conservation a “way of life.” And while Brown did remove those emergency water restrictions, he has not rescinded his May 2016 executive order, issued in the thick of the drought, that details a host of conservation measures.

One calls for a permanent framework of water restrictions that push urban water agencies to reduce water use by 20 percent by 2020 using strategies such as strengthened standards to reduce per-capita water use and restrictions on industrial water use. Another imposes permanent restrictions on hosing off sidewalks, watering lawns and washing cars. Yet another one calls for the completion of detailed management plans by agriculture water users.

These are restrictions the governor has long advocated. Most Californians understand the need for water conservation and have largely exceeded the tough standards the state government has imposed. They also realize that this year’s wet season could easily be followed next year by a dry one. But critics also question some of the government’s own water policies.

For instance, as I reported in 2015, federal and state officials were lowering water levels at the massive New Melones Reservoir and draining Lake Tulloch to help a dozen hatchery fish make their way to the Pacific. As Californians cut back on watering their lawns, their officials were draining water supplies for questionable purposes. Irrigation officials in the Sierra foothills were wondering why the state wasn’t prioritizing water needs at the apex of a drought, or at least able to temporary halt these fish-related water flows during a time of scarcity.

Furthermore, officials at the California Coastal Commission continue to delay approvals for a Huntington Beach desalination plant over concerns about the effect of the plant’s proposed ocean-intake pipes on microscopic plankton. 

But the big news for now is that the governor’s trailer bills are moving forward – and they attempt to turn the drought crisis into permanent water policy. 

Steven Greenhut is Western region director for the R Street Institute. Write to him at sgreenhut@rstreet.org.

California gets low “freedom” score

Good morning! Happy hump day.

As the Legislature rolls through its last month of session, a Libertarian think tank issued a report saying that when it comes to liberty, California is one of the most restrictive states on its citizens.

The Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, in its “Freedom in the 50 States” report divided liberty into three categories: personal, fiscal and regulatory. And while the Golden State ranked high (16th) in personal liberty, it was near the bottom in fiscal (46th) and regulatory (48th).

Overall, New Hampshire ranked the highest. New York was the only state with a lower overall liberty score than California.

For context, Cato defines libertarianism, in part, as “the belief that each person has the right to live his life as he chooses so long as he respects the equal rights of others.” And while the data used to compile the score gives a good snapshot of life in the state, many of the metrics used are sure to be viewed differently from person to person.

For example, gun “rights” account for more than 3 percent of the total score — and while the study sees gun-control measures as a threat to liberty, many Californians view restrictions on firearm usage and access as a necessity. But the study’s guiding principal is based on how governmental policies and regulations affect an individual’s ability to make his or her own decisions.

CalWatchdog has more. 

In other news:

• “State officials will not force most California water districts to reduce water use this year, even as they caution that the five-year drought persists and note that drought-fueled wildfires continue to wreak havoc,” reports The Sacramento Bee.
• “Felons serving time in county jails would be able to vote in California elections under a bill approved Tuesday by the state lawmakers and sent to the governor,” reports the Los Angeles Times. 
• A Democratic assemblyman has an oil industry lobbyist ghostwriting audit requests, a practice his chief of staff says is common, reports the Los Angeles Times.
• Some legislators are hoping a one-day hunger strike stunt will highlight the need to pass additional protections for farmworker overtime pay. The San Diego Union-Tribune has more. 

Assembly:

• Next floor session Thursday. Agriculture Committee hearing today. 

Senate:

• In at 10 a.m. Multiple hearings. 

Gov. Brown:

• No public events announced. 

Tips: matt@calwatchdog.com

Follow us: @calwatchdog @mflemingterp

New follower: @SacPressClub

What to watch for in Sacramento this month

Good morning, and welcome to August, which is sure to be a busy month in Sacramento as legislators fight to get their priorities passed before the legislative session ends on August 31. 

While a large number of bills will be debated, there are four major things to watch for: Environment, transportation, affordable housing and overtime for farmworkers.

CalWatchdog has more. 

In other news:

• The Los Angeles city attorney is warning three area (crisis pregnancy centers) that they’re breaking a new state reproductive disclosure law and could face fines of $500 if they don’t comply,” which represents the first time steps have been taken to enforce the seven-month-old Reproductive Freedom, Accountability, Comprehensive Care, and Transparency Act. Rewire has more. 

• A bill in Sacramento looks to cap environmental lawsuits against large development projects at nine months, which supporters see as a big boost for development around the state, reports the Los Angeles Times.

• Why experts say drone education isn’t working, reports the San Bernardino County Sun.  

• Oops: “A half century after building the largest water-delivery system in America, California officials say they now realize they put their giant straws to capture Delta water in the wrong place.” The San Jose Mercury News has more. 

Assembly:

• In at 1 p.m.

Senate: 

• In at 2 p.m.

Gov. Brown: 

• No public events announced.

Tips: matt@calwatchdog.com

Follow us: @calwatchdog @mflemingterp

New followers: @LABJnews

Californians exceeded the state’s 25 percent water conservation mandate in October for the fourth month in a row. That might be good news for a parched state, but it’s also drying up the coffers of many water districts, some of which have raised rates to help make up the loss.

Ratepayers are in essence being punished for obeying the state order to conserve water – something they thought would save them money. That has officials like John Laird, secretary of the California Natural Resources Agency, scrambling to explain.

“In some places people see costs go up, and think they conserved and did a great job, and yet the fixed costs are the same. And it is very confusing,” Laird acknowledged at a Nov. 17 hearing by the Select Committee on Water Consumption and Alternative Resources.

“It flies in the face of the public’s general view that if you pay more you should get more, as opposed to you might have to pay more to get what you get now,” Laird continued. “As opposed to if the system collapses because there’s no investment you might have to pay more to get a lot less. And that is a very hard concept to explain to the rate-paying public in a way that they get it.”

Water and Power Departments’ Budgetary Woes

Los Angelenos have reduced water use by 18 percent, according to the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, which has resulted in a $110.7 million hit to the agency’s budget. LADWP is now proposing a $57.6 million rate hike to recoup a little over half of its losses.

Other districts that have passed or are considering conservation-related rate hikes include the Contra Costa Water District, the East Bay Municipal Utility District and the San Diego Public Utilities Department, according to Reuters.

“It doesn’t seem intuitive that I’m using less water, but I’m paying more,” said Assemblyman Rich Gordon, D- Menlo Park, who chairs the committee. “How do you explain that to the public?”

Mark Cowin, director of the California Department of Water Resources responded, “I would agree that getting this message across that we’re going to expect ratepayers, and taxpayers for that matter, to pay more to hopefully not lose more than they would have otherwise, it’s a tough message,”

He cited the proposed $15 billion Delta pipelines project, known as the California WaterFix, which is expected to be funded largely through rate hikes.

“Why would we expect water users in southern California, the Bay Area and the Central Valley to pay more to get the same amount of supply they are now?” said Cowin. “Well, we have to make the case that sustainability is worth the price we are asking people to pay for.”

Climate change can actually help state officials make that case to the public, he said.

Messaging to the Public

“I think we have as good an opportunity now as we ever have,” Cowin said. “We’re in this unique opportunity right now where we’re messaging to the public: keep conserving water because we might have a fifth year of drought, plus prepare for a potential Godzilla El Nino flood event. That really is what we are looking at as the new normal for California extremes.”

Cowin continued, “So we have got to be able to message better that global climate change leads to these extremes, [which] means that the typical inexpensive sources of water are a thing of the past. And more expensive options are a part of the future.

“We’ve been lucky for decades or generations that we’ve had relatively inexpensive water throughout California, some more expensive than others. But, moving forward, water is going to be more expensive and we’re going to have to pay for it.”

Increasing Water Use Efficiency

One way to keep costs down is to use water more efficiently. Currently, much of California’s treated wastewater ends up dumped in rivers and streams. California should follow Israel’s model and instead spread that treated effluent on farms and orchards, said Eilon Adar, a professor at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, via Skype.

“Water is still being used in non-responsible ways,” he said. “You waste water. Cities in the Bay Area, they produce a lot of effluence that cannot be used in the Bay Area. However, if diverted about 150 miles to the south there are places in California that can appreciate this water.”

The state definitely can do more with recycled wastewater, said Peter Gleick, president of the Pacific Institute. Only about 13 percent of California’s wastewater – 600,000 acre-feet – is currently recycled. He believes the state will meet its targets of annually producing 1 million acre-feet of recycled wastewater by 2020 and 2 million acre-feet by 2030.

“That’s an enormous amount of water,” Gleick said. “That’s water that we already have, that we already capture and treat and throw away into the ocean. Let’s put that to use.”

Gleick said he’s also concerned about “massive over-pumping of the groundwater. There’s been this long-term inexorable drop in groundwater. Groundwater is a resource, but we’re over-tapping it. And that’s unsustainable, and we know that that’s a problem.”

He continued, “There’s been enormous progress in capturing water use efficiently and developing local supplies. We are, however, still living beyond our means. We are taking too much water from our rivers and streams and especially in our aquifers. Even in wet years we over-pump our aquifers. That is unsustainable.”

On the plus side, nearly doubling the amount of groundwater pumping has helped the state’s $54 billion agricultural industry weather the drought, according to Jay Lund, director of the Center for Watershed Science at UC Davis. About 70 percent of the lost surface water was made up by groundwater.

As a result, despite four years of drought, state agriculture has lost only about 4 percent in net revenue and about 10,000 jobs, he said.

“It’s amazing to have this drought with this relatively small effect,” Lund said. “We will always have drought in California. It’s like the East Coast having hurricanes.”

He agreed with Cowin that weather extremes like drought have the benefit of reminding the public about the state’s ongoing water needs.

“Droughts bring attention to where water management is not keeping pace,” said Lund. A Dutch engineer told him “in the Netherlands they need to have a threatening flood every generation to remind them that they have water problems. California is a dry place susceptible to floods. It’s useful for us … to see droughts and floods from time to time.”

The committee plans to hold a hearing in December in Los Angeles on desalination and one in January in Sacramento on recycling and reclamation issues.

From water storage to road repair and beyond, legislators have not met Brown eye to eye, raising the prospect of a protracted conflict that continues well into next year, with elections looming next November.

Diminishing returns

Brown had prided himself on a relatively hands-off approach to Sacramento’s fractured political configuration, which has seen moderate Democrats sink strict environmental regulations and Republicans adopt an on-again, off-again approach to negotiations with the governor’s office. “This particular approach of mine has worked in the past,” Brown said, according to the Los Angeles Times. But between California’s drought and its challenges in shifting away from the gas tax to maintain public roads, that comfortable attitude has begun to show diminishing returns.

“Administration officials estimate that $59 billion is needed for state roads, and local officials say an additional $78 billion is required for cities and counties. The longer it takes to reach a deal, the bigger the price tag will be,” the Times reported.

Analysts and opinion writers, long frustrated with the low quality of California’s roads, have homed in on the latest round of infrastructure troubles. “Traffic accidents in California increased by 13 percent over a three-year period — the result of terrible roads and worse drivers,” as Victor Davis Hanson wrote in the San Jose Mercury News. Hanson and others have held up roads as a barometer of the state’s broader political and economic health. “Why is California choosing the path of Detroit,” he asked, “growing government that it cannot pay for, shorting the middle classes, hiking taxes but providing shoddy services and infrastructure in return, and obsessing over minor bumper-sticker issues while ignoring existential crises?”

Looking for leadership

Brown has even taken some implicit heat on infrastructure from within his own administration. The state’s treasury secretary John Chiang recently revealed his belief that the governor needs to launch a new, transparent and top-to-bottom review of California’s infrastructure needs.

“Chiang wants to use the treasurer’s office to foster long-term thinking that California is sorely lacking and arguably has lacked since Pat Brown was governor in the 1960s, Chiang said at his keynote address to the California Debt and Investment Advisory Commission’s event before the Bond Buyer’s California Public Finance Conference,” according to Bond Buyer.

“One of the challenges the state faces is to persuade people of the importance of long-term investment in an environment where many of them distrust the financial markets, Chiang said. That’s where transparency comes in. The state has made progress in governance and management evidenced by its boosted bond ratings, but people still ask what the long-range plan is, Chiang said. […] Such a study would need to come from the governor and the state Legislature, however, not the treasurer’s office, Chiang said. His office’s role would be to provide education.”

Winter worries

Clouding the picture further, Congressional Republicans in Washington have taken Brown to task on plans for shoring up the state’s water infrastructure. “The Republican members of California’s delegation are demanding a government plan to store the deluge of water that could come with El Nino this winter,” the Sacramento Bee reported. “Fourteen GOP lawmakers will send a letter to President Barack Obama and Gov. Jerry Brown on Thursday asking for specifics about how federal and state agencies expect to capture, save and transport water. […] Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif., said the governor has opposed a plan approved by the House, and the Senate hasn’t proposed one of its own.”

Meanwhile, the public utilities have joined in the chorus. In an op-ed at the Los Angeles Daily News, California Water Association executive director Jack Hawks warned that “we cannot build a reliable water supply on conservation alone. Customers have been doing an outstanding job during the current drought emergency, but this level of conservation is not sustainable over the long term.”

The oldest serving United States Senator waved off the suggestion.

Feinstein spent time discussing her support for the Iran deal on nuclear power forged by the Obama administration. She argued that there was no better deal to be had, that it was this deal or nothing. If no deal were confirmed, the senator suggested, in as little as three months there would likely be a military conflict.

Feinstein argued that the United States, which led other world powers in the negotiations, would suffer its leadership position if Congress rejects the deal. Other nations involved in the deal would drop sanctions on Iran forcing the U.S. into the difficult position of deciding to sanction allies, Feinstein said.

Feinstein spoke on the day that news broke that enough senators have now agreed to support President Obama in any veto override attempt.

The senator was clearly basing her vote on the hope that Iran will change its official policies and attitude over the course of the agreement. “Fifteen years will tell if Iran is capable of change or not,” she said.

On California’s devastating drought, Sen. Feinstein touted a proposal she put together with California’s junior senator, Barbara Boxer. She praised the Los Angeles area Metropolitan Water District for having good water storage and reservoirs, which she said the rest of the state doesn’t have.

Pointing out that the infrastructure for water supplies was built for a population of 16 million people instead of the current 38 million, Feinstein argued for new infrastructure. She said her plan contains a dozen desalination plants and 105 water-recycling projects among other proposals.

Before offering her philosophy on the best way to run local government, Feinstein relived the day that would lead to her becoming San Francisco’s chief executive — the assassinations of Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk by former Supervisor Dan White.

She saw White in the hallway and called to him but he rebuffed her by asking for a moment. Feinstein then heard shots and discovered Milk’s body.

Ascending to the mayor’s office a week later, Feinstein ran the city for 10 years. She said cities best run from the center, stressing practicality, not ideology. She said most people could agree on the need for improvements and infrastructure.

Indeed, in his introduction, Eli Broad remarked that the senator had an ability to find the political center during her entire career.

Bishop, CA

Gov. Jerry Brown suffered another setback in his effort to gain the upper hand over California’s persistent drought. New details on alterations to his massive pumping plan, which would change the way the Delta region distributes the water that flows into it, revealed major changes that have aroused major opposition.

In a harsh editorial, the San Francisco Chronicle underscored that the altered scheme “will cost more, provide less water than originally envisioned (but more than pumped south now), restore less than half of the delta habitat than proposed, take longer to build and, most notably, lack the 50-year guarantee of water deliveries that made the old plan attractive.”

For that, Brown had federal regulators to blame. Environmental agencies objected that his half-century assurance “would lock in water deliveries without regard to shifting environmental conditions,” the Chronicle reported. Since that fact was inherent to any such promise, Brown had to drop it in order to proceed.

Measurement problems

The problem has been compounded by a simple dilemma: “nobody can say with certainty how much Delta water is actually being used by Delta farmers,” as the Sacramento Bee observed. “The state allows thousands of water rights holders to divert water directly from rivers and streams, but in most cases has no metering system in place to gauge just how much they take.” What’s more, relying on a meter system could simply produce unclear results, the Bee added, “because of the complexities of the estuary itself: a fragile natural ecosystem that’s been replumbed and reconfigured to deliver water to farms and cities to the south and west.”

The Delta drama played out amid state regulators’ first issuance of a fine for unauthorized water use in a farming district. “The proposed fine, which the district will likely contest in a coming hearing, is the first fine sought by the Board under a new structure in which water rights holders can be penalized for past unauthorized use of water, even if they have stopped diverting since,” Mother Jones noted.

Regulators, farmers, and others have clashed over measurements involving other sources of water, too. “California still doesn’t require that water pumped from underground be measured at all, much less factored into an overall assessment of total water resources,” according to a ProPublica reporter writing for the New York Times; “it’s merely an option under a new law signed last September.”

“California’s new groundwater legislation does require local water authorities to come up with sustainable groundwater plans, but they don’t have to do that until 2020, and they don’t have to balance their water withdrawals until 2040.”

Regulatory wrangling

Meanwhile, in Washington, Congressional Republicans have centered around a fresh push to reform the federal rules around how much California’s pumps can flow. The Western Water and American Food Security Act of 2015 boasted the support of House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif. “We designed the bill to move as much water down south to our farms and to our cities as possible without making any fundamental changes to the environmental law,” said McCarthy.

“A bill by Republican Rep. David Valadao set for consideration Thursday would require that federal regulators maintain certain pumping levels unless the secretary of the Interior Department certifies that level would harm the long-term survival of the Delta smelt and no other alternatives to protect the smelt are available,” the Associated Press reported. “The 170-page bill also sets deadlines for the completion of feasibility studies to build or enlarge five dams in the state and ends efforts to build up salmon populations in the San Joaquin River.”

Observers expected the bill to meet the same fate as two previous attempts by the House GOP to pass federal drought relief for California on terms amenable to state and national Republicans, many of whom view strict environmental regulations as a major source of residents’ water woes. But Valadao, in a news conference covered by AP, said the legislation’s Senate outlook was “still up in the air,” with “some support” fueling hopes of a possible win.

Party politics

In conversations with the New York Times, analysts warned that the drought’s lasting effects will require the federal Bureau of Reclamation to “completely rebuild a 20th-century infrastructure so that it can efficiently conserve and distribute water,” although dizzying costs make that challenge daunting.

According to the Times, “a new water infrastructure across half of the United States could cost taxpayers billions of dollars,” deepening partisan divides over how much the drought indicates a broader change in the national and global climate. Already, the disagreement has put the Bureau in the political crosshairs. While Democrats would push reform in one direction, Republicans have shoved in the other:

“Representative Kevin McCarthy, the majority leader and a Republican from California’s parched inland, has criticized the bureau’s efforts in his state. Lawmakers like Mr. McCarthy are particularly furious that the bureau and the State of California continue to direct scarce water into rivers to support fish habitat, even as farms wither and families struggle to make do with less water.”

McCarthy and other Republicans have recently unveiled a drought relief package all but certain to pass the House of Representatives. But it faces a stiff challenge in the Senate, where Democrats prefer an earlier proposal put together by members of their own party. The bill’s only sponsoring Democrat, Rep. Jim Costa, told the Sacramento Bee he hoped it would “be the basis for conversations” with Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., and “continue to focus attention on the crisis, as a way to get a response from the Senate.”

Going backwards

The frustration came amid new data showing that California’s crash conservation program has actually permitted widespread spikes in consumption, despite Gov. Jerry Brown’s order to slash urban use by 25 percent.

The several central and southern counties tallying significant increases have blamed everything from accounting errors to burgeoning prison populations for the numbers, according to the Los Angeles Times. “In Kern County, California City reported a puzzling 28% increase in consumption, while the Casitas Municipal Water District, in Ventura County, appeared to have boosted water use 26%,” the Times reported. “Likewise, the San Gabriel Valley city of El Monte reported a 10% increase in water use, while the San Joaquin Valley city of Reedley reported a 9% jump.”

The difficulty in accounting for the changes underscored the budgetary strain California’s new rules have placed on water agencies and the municipalities that must work with them. “Water departments are increasing rates and adding fees because they’re losing money as their customers conserve,” the Associated Press reported. “They say they still have to pay for fixed costs including repairing pipelines, customer service and enforcing water restrictions — and those costs aren’t decreasing.”

“It’s not clear precisely how widespread drought-related rate increases are because no government agency or association tracks them. But agencies across California are reporting they’ve taken steps to tap customers to offset the losses of conservation. Residents in the San Francisco Bay Area, for example, are seeing higher bills after the region’s largest water wholesaler increased the price of water 28 percent to make up for lagging sales.”

Turning to tech

While regulators and policymakers face a painful transition, at least some in the private sector have sought out a different kind of fix. One startup, Sustainable Water and Innovative Irrigation Management, has pivoted to California from its Colorado home.” Developed in partnership with the US Department of Agriculture and Colorado State University, SWIIM started out in Colorado, where it’s been deployed on about 10,000 acres,” Mother Jones noted. “With the West Coast drought in full swing, the company is now putting some 80 percent of its resources into California. It will roll out pilot projects this summer in Kern County and in the Sacramento, Coachella, and Imperial valleys.”

David Prasad / flickr

Last week, House Republicans introduced legislation to revise water policies in California and the rest of the West Coast, improving water reliability and making environmental laws more flexible.

H.R. 2898, authored by California Congressman David Valadao, is backed by the entire California Republican delegation. Titled the “Western Water and American Food Security Act of 2015,” the bill, according to Rep. Valadao’s website, “aims to make more water available to families, farmers, and communities in California and bordering Western states.” The legislation also makes it easier for federal regulators to authorize projects that will increase water capture during periods of greater precipitation, and begin projects that have already been authorized for more than a decade.

“California’s drought has devastated communities throughout the Central Valley and now the consequences are extending throughout the country. Inaction will result in the collapse of our domestic food supply,” Rep. Valadao said in a prepared statement. “Congress cannot make it rain but we can enact policies that expand our water infrastructure, allow for more water conveyance, and utilize legitimate science to ensure a reliable water supply for farmers and families.”

Water agencies throughout the Central Valley also voiced their support for H.R. 2898. Michael Stearns, chairman at the San Luis and Delta-Mendota Water Authority, said he was “heartened by the introduction” of the bill, as it would “provide much needed relief for the people, businesses, and communities” serviced by water agencies.

“Our people are desperate,” said Eric Borba, chair at the Friant Water Authority. “We need solutions that will provide real water for our area, and we need them now.” Many of the Central Valley water agencies considered the bill to be a vital first step in finding solutions and enacting legislation to aid impacted communities in California.

Despite widespread support for the bill, House Republicans are still expecting much backlash from both the Senate and Obama Administration.

House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy said in a release that, for years, he had offered and supported many solutions that passed the House but were not enacted into law. “This action is unacceptable,” he said, and deemed it imperative to sign into law a water bill “that rebalances the priorities between fish and people and delivers water that our communities have contracted and paid for.”

Text in the bill authorizes “operational flexibility in times of drought” as well as “flexibility for export/inflow ratio.” The legislation also includes mandates for “new science” to be used in the management of endangered fish, such as the Delta smelt.

But these very allocations are drawing resistance from House Democrats and their Senate colleagues. San Rafael Democratic Rep. Jared Huffman summed up the proposal as a “blame the fish” initiative backed by agri-business. According to the Press Democrat, H.R. 2898 would weaken environmental protection by diverting more water from the Delta into Central Valley aqueducts and scrap restoration plans for the San Joaquin River.

Rep. Huffman has drafted an alternative to Valadao’s legislation, which includes $1.4 billion in emergency funding to deploy efficient irrigation technology, drill new wells and build new pipelines. The plan also allocated money for “water recycling, reclamation and storm water capture projects, cleanup of contaminated groundwater, watershed protection, efforts to limit evaporation from reservoirs and canals, a Justice Department crackdown on water theft for marijuana cultivation and an expanded X-prize to promote development of new desalination technologies.”

The proposal has not yet been introduced in the House. H.R. 2898 has since been referred to the committees on Natural Resources and Agriculture.