THE FUTURE OF WATER MANAGEMENT IN CALIFORNIA
 John A Nejedly

      Any reflection upon the now clearly evident disorder of the resource, electric power, must compel serious review of the present management of all resources but particularly water, over which, as distinguished from electricity, we have no control of supply.

      It must first be clearly understood that all resource management absolutely requires long-term planning and the experiences of electric power clearly illustrate the absence of such required planning, and the present structure of our state government has no capacity to provide response to that indispensable requirement.

      Administration of resources is presently provided by appointed officials whose tenure is limited and whose actions are subject to control by the Governor.

      Succeeding administrations may order complete revision in agency policy and protocol and may subvert any plan or project.

      Any actions taken by such agencies inconsistent with the agenda of the Governor are subject to veto by that office, and even if a program were to emerge within these constraints, the Legislature can deny its fulfillment for denying funds essential to its implementation.

      This brief inventory of political circumstance that produced the present chaos of electricity is common to all resources.

     Emerging from this arena of political circumstance:  Bankruptcy of major power producers, generation facilities continuing to operate beyond proper maintenance, abrogation of reservoir procedures to reduce planned retention for normal and appropriate distribution, delivery of water to generate electricity during an “electric supply crisis” that could easily have been avoided by developing additional generating facilities when their need was obvious years ago.  These are but a short list of the consequence of the lack of long-term resource management in electricity.

      Absent that same element of permanence of policy and procedures, our resource water faces the same consequences, but in far different circumstances and potentially far greater disorder than electric power today.

      Water provision is largely beyond our control and is far more critical than electricity.  Temporary sources of electric power can be created and shortages limited in effect to inconvenience and economic losses.  Water must be available to our very existence.

      In California, recognition of these realities has led to an intricate system of legislative and judicial directions to establish a potential framework for effective water resource management.  Despite this integrated structure, long-term water management in California in the broad public interest does not exist and absent change, never will exist.

      The reason it never will exist is simply that long-term planning and fulfillment of a plan presently cannot be provided, as demonstrated in the present circumstances of the Public Utilities Commission, administered by short term appointees whose management is subject to rejection by the Governor and succeeding governors whose agenda is incompatible with the current then protocol of regulation.

      Differing from electricity, which has removed the vestiges of governmental oversight by deregulation, the major water distributors in the State, the Federal and State Water export projects and their water contractors, have, in the absence of regulation by the agency directed to provide management, the State Water Resources Control Board, usurped the power to regulate and now manage themselves.  This “administration” being established by “Agreements” among themselves, and that management serves only the interests of the parties to the “Agreements” of the State and Federal Export operation, not the public interest.

 For example, in the 1976-77 drought, reservoirs were completely exhausted to respond to export contractors’ demands providing no retention for domestic necessities required by constitutional, legislative and judicial decisions.  The allocation of priorities of delivery of the highest quality water available in the state to farm crops while domestic requirements are referred to treated sewage.  The export pumping is managed solely to meet export contracts such as continuing pumping while endangered smelt were deliberately killed at pump intakes and releases to solely generate electricity and all other programs for which storage had been assigned.

      Next, in order to secure the facilities necessary to secure more export water at public expense, the export agencies created a separate agency, CALFED; the sole parties to the “Agreements,” being the sole parties to the CALFED “Report.”  No public interest in the final form of the “Report”, which did not include any public participation in the execution of the “Report,” for expressions of public concerns in water management.

      This report now completed has been presented to the Congress.

 Present Congressional response to the CALFED “Report” includes an appropriation of $3 billion in public funds for facilities to export additional water without contribution by the benefited contractors.  A new governance structure to include all Federal and State appointed officials involved in State and Federal export projects, again without public participation.  Federal endorsement of the monopoly provided to the water contractors to whom a qualified 70% of the supply is guaranteed, while, in 1998 agriculture contributed only 1.9% of the Gross State Product.

 Tragically, the Report ignores the realities of the failures of resource administration by short-term appointed officials now so evident in the experiences in California in electric power and water resources management.

 It compounds those circumstances by combining the new collection of appointed officials, whose terms in office are subject to termination every two years as their separate appointing authority change every two years as Federal and State elections are separated by that time interval.

 The sole beneficiaries of the present circumstances and proposals are obviously the export agencies and their contractors.  Any composition of State and Federal appointed officials’ decisions will be determined by the largest contributor of funding, the Federal Government, thus putting in place in management of water resources the Federal government agencies now involved in export projects.

 One current Federal proposal reflecting provisions of the “Report” specifically provide for a gift of public funds to the owners of lands to be acquired.

 For example, inappropriate farming has left thousands of acres of now abandoned farm land destroyed by accumulation of salt and untreated agricultural wastes is subject to acquisition for purposes not yet identified.

 Acquisitions of private property for public purposes requires the public agency to pay to the owner the “Fair Market Value” of the property.

 The CALFED Report presented to Congress proposes not the “Fair Market Value” but the price at which the owner, as the Report requires, is willing to sell and demands.  A clear gift of public funds and an illustration of the interests to be served and not the public interest in this proposed gift of public funds.

 SUMMARY

      Review of all resource management in California will quickly demonstrate that there is no long-term regulation.  Electrical energy that can be augmented to reflect predictable increases in demand is left unattended and responded to only by an ad hoc manner, which leads to increased levels of confusion and crisis created by the Governor until additions to supply can be provided long after they are required.

      Water portends a more critical future.  Supply of the resource can only be provided by nature which presently, in years of “normal” precipitation, is not adequate for existing requirements.

 Electricity management has responded simply by abandoning the field by deregulation.  Water regulation has been allowed to degenerate by those to be governed who have been allowed to govern themselves and secure presently an 85% monopoly of the managed resource.

 That consequence has permitted the principal participants in water distribution, the State and Federal export projects, to serve only their own interests, which do not include management of the resource to provide for the highest and best use of the resource and accommodate proper discharge of the public trust and the most beneficial uses of the resource.

 Water management is left to the program of those intended to be managed, the State and Federal Water Export Projects.

 Their final effort has been to create an ostensibly independent agency, CALFED, whose Report is participated in only by the agencies involved in export.

 Legislation to respond to that program has now been introduced.

 A brief reference to the most important Congressional action is the provision of $3 billion of Federal public funds to construct facilities required for greater export with no contribution by those receiving the additional water.

 Current proposals to extend to agriculture, a 70% qualified

monopoly , an access to the resource and particular provision for special advantage to the export operations such as gifts of public funds on land acquisitions.

 As the Federal Treasury is the sole contractor for all costs of facility construction and program management, the Federal participation in management of water resources in California will obviously be by the appointed officials of the Federal agencies involved.

The response of those officials will obviously serve the interests of those with whom they contract for export.  A firm monopoly of available water, water pricing, gifts of public funds for land acquisitions, absolute control of reservoir management excluding broad public interests, control of pumping operations solely in the interest of those with whom they contract deliberately timing pump operations destroying the endangered salmon advocacy for change in water entitlements to rescind the present right of the State to amend permits to provide for redistribution to achieve the highest and best uses of the resource and other circumstances that emerge concerning the broad public interest which, obviously, will continue to be ignored.

Thus placing California regulation of water in California in the hands of appointed officials subject in tenure to the vagaries of State and Federal elections for the offices of Governor and the President.