www.sacbee.com/2010/08/07/2943270/state-water-bond-awash-in-bad.html

Special to The Bee

Published Saturday, Aug. 07, 2010

The Legislature's recent $11 billion water bond, passed in the Senate and signed by the governor, is a horrific disappointment for Californians interested in a sustainable and economical water future.

While the legislators and governor have congratulated themselves for bringing an end to the persistent water wars of California, they have cobbled together a pork-laden bond package that only a completely dysfunctional government would hail as an accomplishment. It represents bad water policy and bad economics that actually move us in all the wrong directions. It's no wonder that the governor has asked the Legislature to defer the bond proposition for another election cycle.

If we were to apply a set of standards for moving California forward in its water management, the critical criteria by which we would judge the water bond are: economics, sustainability, natural limits and climate change

Let's examine the $11 billion water bond, Proposition 18, through these criteria.

The bill, titled the Safe, Clean and Reliable Drinking Water Supply Act of 2010, contains generous funding for actions that are close to the goals of many environmentally oriented organizations. They include: drought relief, regional water management funding, Delta sustainability, groundwater protection and water quality, water recycling and water conservation, and watershed protection and restoration totaling more than $8 billion. A total of $3 billion is designated for more surface storage dams – Temperance Flat on the San Joaquin River and Sites Reservoir near Sacramento – although the amounts designated for each category can be changed.

This allocation for dams is the poison pill that makes this whole bond issue untenable. The dams have some unique characteristics.

Temperance Flat is planned above the existing Friant dam, on a river that is now dry on part of its stretch and which is in the process of a long-term restoration to allow more water downriver for the fish and ecosystem health. These two actions – a new dam on the same river that is committed to increased stream flows – certainly are at cross-purposes.

Sites Reservoir, while hailed by its proponents for not being in a riverbed, will get its water from the Sacramento River, already oversubscribed and planned for more overdraft by a potential canal or tunnel through the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta.

Because of the overwhelming damage to California's ecosystem that more dams would create, this whole bond issue, despite its favorable provisions, fails all of the established criteria. The dams would contribute to significant degradation of our rivers, violating the sustainability criteria.

It gets a negative rating on economics since surface storage dams are by far the most costly and least beneficial ways to obtain increased water supply, since the state already is paying $20 billion out of its general fund and holding another $3 billion which has been approved by voters but not yet sold.

California cannot afford another $11 billion general obligation bond. It contributes to our continuing failure to recognize the natural limits of our water supplies, and it fails to consider the lessened amount of water that will be available in the future because of global climate change.

For all of the reasons cited above, we urge a significant rewrite of the bond if it is deferred or a "no" vote on the proposition if it stays on the November ballot.

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Nick Di Croce is a former member of the Public Advisory Committee for the State Water Plan. Nick Di Croce is the lead author of a report on California water solutions from the Environmental Water Caucus (http://ewccalifornia.org) and a board member of the California Water Impact Network, a nonprofit that advocates for water solutions.