WATER, WATER EVERYWHERE, BUT NOT ENOUGH FOR ALL
John A Nejedly

 This discussion concerns water and its management in California.  The recent unprecedented acceleration of consumer prices for electric and natural gas, programmed blackouts, considered bankruptcy of a major provider, clear evidence of inadequacies of supply and now compelling evidence of the absence of long-term planning and regulation have provoked serious public concern.

 That concern must be directed to the more important resource, water.

 The review provides an accounting of our water resources, their current circumstances and the management or lack of management that has brought us to those present conditions that uncorrected, will lead inevitably to the same circumstance of electricity.

 There is nothing here that has not been evident and reported for decades.  The mute evidence of the destruction of the San Joaquin River, and the emasculation of the Trinity River and Mono Lake speaks for itself.  The stark reality that managed water supplies are now not adequate for present requirements which will inevitably increase must provoke attention to the totality of circumstances that have brought us to this reality and the alternatives that may be available for the future.

 However, the frenzied ad hoc political response to conditions in electricity and the conflicts with Federal Administration serve to provoke serious attention to the more critical resource, water.

 The most important problem in water management is the bifurcated administration of two public agencies, state and federal.  Agencies that are often in conflict with different facilities and serving disparate purposes.  No collective planning or common operating procedures are in place and when decisions of state management are perceived as contrary to federal interests, the issue is transferred to state courts delaying the application of the decisions to the point that they may be made moot by the passage of time and changing circumstances.

 The State Water Resources Control Board, the agency ostensibly established to provide resource management, has utterly failed to discharge its responsibilities for appropriate distribution in the broad public interest and the first allocation required by the legislature and the judiciary, domestic use.

 When sporadically the Board does act to execute its responsibilities and its action is not compatible with the Governor’s agenda, the Board simply rescinds its decisions.

 No effective administration is in place to assign, modify or enforce water allocations.  One public agency spent $30 million of public funds and thirty years in attempting to secure a water source only to abandon it when no assistance in perfecting its permit has been provided. 

 Management to put in effect the obligation to provide water first to domestic consumption has not been accommodated.

 In the 1976-77 period, for example, reservoir capacity was exhausted to principally serve agriculture and water export and little was left in reserve for domestic priority in Northern California and other industry requirements.  Had there not been an early and substantial precipitation in 1978, circumstances would have gone critical.  Pristine San Joaquin River Sierra sources is diverted to cotton, corn and alfalfa while domestic priority is ignored and turned to treated sewage for supply.

 The San Joaquin River has been contaminated to the point that water contact recreation, and the once prolific fishery and even agriculture use, cannot utilize a once pristine water system, 70% of the flow of which was the untreated waste stream of agriculture.

 No serious regulation of agricultural contamination is provided for or enforced.  For example, when one poison, selenium, was finally admitted to have destroyed the Kesterson Refuge and constituted a public nuisance, its abatement was not required as would be in the case of any other public nuisance.  Water continues to be provided to areas of selenium concentration and the flow directed away from the Refuge and now directly to the San Joaquin River, 70% of which became that of untreated agricultural water.

 There is no management of our underwater water resources.  As a result, aquifers have been mined beyond natural replacement, creating voids into which surface lands have collapsed destroying forever that storage capacity and compelling deeper pumping as water levels are lowered.

 Two agencies, separated politically and by purpose, acting independently and often in conflict, operate their water projects autonomously.  There is no effective central authority in place to establish collective planning or regulation or the authority to govern both with a common motivation and goal, the most beneficial use of the resource in the broad public interest and trust.

 This is the short list of problems in water management that uncorrected will ultimately lead to the now publicized circumstance of electric power and gas.

 The political structure has obviously failed to manage this critical resource in the broad public interest.  In the vacuum, the principal export agencies and contractors have established an arrangement among themselves to best serve their singular purposes, export of the largest amount of water possible from the Sacramento River, the San Joaquin no longer being a viable source.

 The parties first utilized the legislative process securing legislation authorizing the Peripheral Canal.

 That legislation was defeated by a referendum.

 To avoid the prospect of referendum of future legislative activity, the sponsors of the Peripheral Canal legislation, the state and Federal export projects and principal contractors, have turned to create water management by managing themselves.

 The regulatory process has been initiated by developing “agreements” among the principal providers and consumers.  These “agreements” establish the procedure through which their objective, exporting more water from the Sacramento River by means of restricting flow into the Delta and taking directly to export pumps by way of a peripheral canal.

 The question then arises what can be provided to correct these circumstances?

 As long as the Holy Grail of politics is the bottom line of particular interests, the answer is:  Nothing, except for a complete termination of present circumstance and replacement by the initiative process.  There is no other viable means of accomplishing the purpose of management in the public interest.

 The legislature, the principal author of the problems described, cannot be expected to be the author of reform.

 All that has been provided so far by the legislature is legislation authorizing projects that serve only to aggravate the circumstance of present management.

 The judiciary, with no previous experience or knowledge of resource administration, looks for direction from the sources that created and failed to correct the issue to be resolved.

 The years to judgment often make the matter litigated moot as the passage of time removes the circumstances that provoke judicial intervention in the first place.

 The judiciary has no effective way to enforce its decisions which are successfully avoided by the appellate process or legislative failure to provide funds necessary to implementation.

 The only prospect for change in the fundamentals of water management, so important to people is the people themselves through the initiative process that may provide equal access to the resource by all industry and primary responsibility provided for domestic use.

      The delivery of Delta water by the State and Federal projects to the San Joaquin Valley has not been accompanied by statewide regulation of salt buildup, insecticides, herbicides and fertilizers.  The San Luis Drain, which was to be constructed to prevent the entry of this waste stream into the San Joaquin River, was built in 1975 only as far as the Kesterson Game Refuge, and subsequently only to the San Joaquin River to avoid the Kesterson disaster.  Nothing further is planned or financed.

 As long as the Holy Grail of politics is the bottom line of special interests, the answer is:  Nothing.

 The legislature, the principal author of the problems described, cannot be expected to be the author of reform.

 All that has been provided so far is legislation authorizing projects that serve only to aggravate the circumstances of present management.

 The judiciary, with no previous experience or knowledge of resource administration, looks for direction from the very sources that created and failed to exercise their responsibility to correct the issue to be resolved.

 The years to decision often make the matter litigated moot as the passage of time removes the circumstances that provoked judicial intervention in the first place.

 The judiciary has no effective way to enforce its decisions which are successfully avoided by the appellate process or legislative failure to provide funds necessary for implementation.

 The strictures of existing legislation that have been established to provide water management rules such as County of Origin, security and the Delta Protection Act, have virtually been repealed by lack of any action to enforce them.

 Two agencies, separated politically and by purpose, acting independently and often in conflict, operate their water projects autonomously.  There is no effective central authority in place to establish collective planning or regulation or the authority to govern both with a common motivation and goal, the most beneficial use of the resource in the broad public interest and trust.

 The initiative process must include common administration of both export projects with and accepted by the Federal Government, which should never have been involved in an intra-state activity and would not have except for state inability to secure financing.

 Operational standards must produce the highest beneficial uses and accommodation for all interested group classification.

 The fundamental purpose in the administration and allocation of water resources is to achieve the most beneficial use of the resource in the exercise of the public trust.  That all allocations are to be made to that purpose and are to be subject to review and modification in changing circumstances.

 The governing body must be elected, not appointed, to appropriate limited terms of office.  Specifics of administration must be incorporated in the initiative subject to the judicial review provided for as in Administrative Law.

 The sole present objective of water management, securing income through commitment to particular interests and political expediency, must be terminated.  Otherwise, present conditions of circumstance today become the realities of tomorrow.

 A November 2 editorial stated, “More water storage would help serve environmental, agricultural and urban users by making supplies for all uses available in dry years.”

 The statement reflects a once popular belief that water can be removed from an environmental circumstance and life form dependent upon it will improve.  Clearly an oxymoron, now thoroughly discredited by compelling evidence of environmental devastation caused by water founded upon that premise.

 As the editorial does not suggest any change in water management authority, it is assumed it will continue.

 Present regulation is provided by appointed representatives of the State and Federal water export projects whose tenure is subject to change every two years. 

 The State agency established to provide that regulation has not been successful, as long-term planning is made impossible by short-term appointees and veto by the Governor of what little action is produced.  In the consequent vacuum, the water export agencies have established regulation by and for themselves and have secured a monopoly of 85% of managed water while contributing, in 1998 for example, only 1.9% of the gross state product.

 It is that management that sponsors securing $3 billion in Federal funds to construct facilities to secure a permanent monopoly of 70% of managed water, including the increases provided by facilities to be constructed to increase water export.

 The editorial’s conclusion that such a program will benefit environmental and domestic uses cannot be sustained in light of past record of ignoring domestic priority and the environment by the export contractors’ record of environmental devastation of the last 40 years.