Economics and the Complexity of the Science of Water May Be High Hurdles in the California Water Special Session

[courtesy of California Progress Report]

Phil Isenberg, Chair of the Delta Vision Blue Ribbon Task Force making a point to the Assembly Special Committee on Water while Jay Lund, an Environmental Professor from the University of California, Davis and C. David Nawi of an Environmental Mediation Firm listen as part of the first panel of experts.

By Frank D. Russo

The Sacramento Bee had an editorial in March of last year, two days after we started the California Progress Report, "Water's Two Religions: Beware a clash of Birkenstocks, Concrete."

The Bee stated: "In the recent failed bond talks, legislators debated the merits of new reservoirs for California with a religious-type fervor that bordered on the bizarre. It is appropriate to take an agnostic view on the matter.

"A new reservoir is neither inherently good nor evil. It all depends on the reservoir's details - where it is, how it is to be managed, who is to pay for it."

There is a lot more in the Bee editorial that seems to hit the nail on the head for the hot topic of water in today in the special session of the legislature that may produce a bond ballot proposition for the February 5, 2008 election.

There are two essential truths in the Bee editorial. First that building dams and engaging in "above ground storage," aka dams, are expensive and the question need to be asked who pays for it. As the Bee put it, talking about just one project: "The problem is that a new reservoir would be expensive. No water district to date has wanted to pay for it."

That first question is one that in my view makes it not necessary to get to what the Bee called the "two orthodoxies"--"the Republican Hard Path (conquering Mother Nature with concrete and subsidized dams) and the Democratic Soft Path (no reservoir subsidies, more water conservation, more coastal preservation and more Birkenstocks."

The barely concealed little secret in the special session on water debate--and the Republican's fixation on dams--is that the end water users do not want to pay for them. The economics of any dams kill them as a viable proposal. They just don't pencil out--unless others pay for their water--out of the state's general fund where general obligation bonds are paid.

But if we must get to the religious aspects of water in California, the other plain truth of the matter is that this is a complex problem. And if dams are somehow part of the solution, they are only part of it--and one has to look at all parts of a solution and see how they fit in with other moving parts of the three dimensional jigsaw puzzle some are trying to solve by next week to get a measure on the ballot.

As Assemblymember John Laird, the head of the Democratic working group on water appointed by Speaker of the Assembly Nunez, said yesterday--We need to get any ballot measure--any bond--drawn up carefully, as we may have only one good shot at making progress on the water issue this year.