Costs muddy water debate

Who would pay for dams is central question in debate

Jack Henshaw
Sacramento Bureau
10/05/2007

SACRAMENTO — The first day of public debate in the Legislature's special session on water started Thursday with an outspoken rally clamoring for new dams but soon turned to the complexity of meeting the water needs of a diverse state with many water regions.

Speakers at a series of events predicted enduring poverty for the San Joaquin Valley without the Temperance Flat dam, questioned the fairness of new state-financed reservoirs to Monterey County area residents who have funded their own projects and acknowledged the state's far-flung water problems such as the Salton Sea.

"There is no one single water problem in California," said Phil Isenberg, a former legislator who now chairs an advisory panel appointed by the governor to recommend how to fix the San Joaquin-Sacramento Delta.

The day's events, anchored by the first hearing of the Assembly's special committee on water, were prompted by proposals for new bonds ranging from $5 billion to $9 billion to meet future water needs.

Coupled with other bills to spend about $600 million of previously approved bond funds, the proposals are intended to address water supply needs statewide, Delta environmental and plumbing problems and groundwater contamination in areas such as the San Joaquin and Salinas valleys.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Republican legislators want to put a bond on the February ballot, but the differences that have long dogged this debate continued Thursday, most notably dams.

San Joaquin Valley residents, many in blue T-shirts reading "Secure California's Future" and carrying signs with such messages as "Water Please."

About 100 Valley residents came on chartered buses to support the governor's proposals for the Temperance Flat reservoir on the San Joaquin River, the Sites reservoir in the Sacramento Valley and the expansion of the existing Los Vaqueros reservoir east of San Francisco.

"Now is the time," Assemblyman Bill Maze, R-Visalia, said of the dams and a water bond.

But Assemblyman John Laird, D-Santa Cruz, noted that the annual debt payment on the bond proposal with the new dams is about the same as the final amount cut in state spending to end the budget crisis this summer, a step that reduced Social Security payments.

"So I have to go back the Social Security recipients in my district and say 'you paid 100 percent of the cost of your water in your dams,' " he said. "Others want you to pay 50 percent of the cost of other peoples' [new] dams for their water and the price is you have to give up your Social Security increase."

The governor is proposing that the state pay up to half the cost of the proposed new dams.

"There is a matter of equity here," Laird said. "The question is what's fair."

The state still has money left over from previous water bonds, each with various restrictions and no money to build dams.

According to the Legislative Analyst's Office, there is:

-$370 million left in unspent funds from $9 billion in water bonds approved by voters between 1996 and 2002.

-$8 billion left from the $9.5 billion in bonds last year.

Jay Lund, of the University of California, Davis, said existing reservoirs can hold about 40 million acre-feet of water and there is anywhere from 150 million acre-feet to 400 million acre-feet in groundwater aquifers.

Speakers said the new reservoirs could help provide water to replenish aquifers but questions were raised about water rights and whether the price of water would be low enough to make it attractive for this use.

Lund added that the Tulare basin is a particularly significant site in the state's water system.

"It is the second hub in the state and its major importance as a hub is it will allow you to take water from the San Joaquin [River] and the Delta and send it south or north," Lund said. "It is also a hub that has a huge amount of groundwater storage in it."

But he also noted that it has "problems with overdraft [and] salt ceiling."

Mario Santoyo, assistant general manager of the Friant Water Authority, stressed that the Temperance Flat dam can play a key role in meeting water needs south of the Delta, especially in case of an emergency there.

In fact, he said there is a study under way with the Metropolitan Water District on possible coordination in the operation of the existing San Luis Reservoir and Temperance Flat to better need water needs.

"You've got to do this with a big bucket," he said in an interview, "and the big bucket has got to be Temperance Flat."