Water bonds may float to voters

Both proposals include billions to help the Delta

Hank Shaw
Capitol Bureau
10/09/2007

SACRAMENTO - The prospect of dueling water bonds on the November 2008 ballot appears increasingly likely.

Senate Leader Don Perata said Monday he will help fund a ballot initiative to float a $6.8 billion water-storage bond based on his legislation that passed a Senate committee Monday afternoon but looks likely to die on the Senate floor today.

"I will not let all this work go to waste," Perata said Monday. "If it goes down on the floor tomorrow, I am already in motion on what I want to do next.

"I think you could sell this to voters in a minute."

A competing proposal, sponsored by Republican Sen. Dave Cogdill of Modesto and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, was killed in the Senate Natural Resources Committee on Monday as expected.

The primary difference between the two proposals is that the Republican-backed bond includes $5 billion to help build two dams in the Central Valley and to expand another in Contra Costa County.

Plan B for Cogdill and his allies has always been to go to the ballot. But public and private polling on voters' views of taxpayer-financed new dams suggests that passing a water bond with a large dam might prove difficult.

Perata's proposal includes money that could be used for dams, but his intent is to help small-scale dams such as the Duck Creek project in eastern San Joaquin County, not large projects such as the Temperance Flat Dam on the San Joaquin River near Fresno.

A slew of groups spoke in support of Perata's proposal Monday, including Stockton's Tom Zuckerman of the Central Delta Water Agency and representatives of The Grupe Co. Both groups said their primary motivation is to fight any proposed peripheral canal around the Delta; Perata's plan does not include money for it.

San Joaquin County officials fear that such a canal would turn the Delta into a polluted backwater.

A spokeswoman for Sen. Michael Machado, D-Linden, said he would join Perata's ballot effort should it come to that.

Significantly, other supporters of Perata's proposal include the environmental lobby and the Metropolitan Water Agency of Los Angeles - arguably the state's most powerful water interest.

Both proposals include billions to help the Delta, which provides more than 25 million Californians with clean drinking water.

Today, the Senate is scheduled to vote on Perata's proposal, which requires two Republican votes to pass. Will that happen?

"Honestly," Perata said. "I don't think so."

Assembly Minority Leader Mike Villines of Clovis, who supports Cogdill's plan, said shifting the dam debate to the ballot box would be a "waste of energy and a waste of money."

Villines says he hopes all parties can meet for a last-ditch effort to craft a compromise before time runs out next week.

"I'm prepared to clear my schedule and do whatever it takes," Villines said. "This is it."