Delta plan critics see conflict of interest in state use of water agency employee
Mike Taugher
Mercury News
10/25/2011
Critics of a new Delta aqueduct said Tuesday that state water officials inappropriately borrowed a representative of water agencies that want the aqueduct to help them develop a plan to build it.
Laura King Moon is on loan to the state Department of Water Resources.
Her regular job is assistant general manager for the State Water Contractors, an association whose two largest members are the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California and the Kern County Water Agency.
She was recently loaned to the state to help develop the Bay Delta Conservation Plan.
That plan is controversial and strongly opposed in the Delta because its centerpiece is an aqueduct that would reduce the flow of fresh water through the Delta in order to stabilize water supplies in the San Joaquin Valley and Southern California.
"Employing someone on loan from a special interest group to advance a planning effort that will benefit that interest group is wildly inappropriate," said Barbara Barrigan-Parrilla, executive director of Restore the Delta. "It sets the fox to guard the henhouse."
It is not unusual for water agencies to borrow employees, but word that Moon is working for the state comes at a sensitive time because the conservation plan is facing increasing criticism.
On Monday, five members of Congress demanded the Interior Department withdraw from a recent agreement that they said gave those Delta water contractors undue influence over the plan.
