Schwarzenegger Administration Proposes to Give Away State Water Resources

[courtesy of California Progress Report]

California Water Plan Amendments Released

By Gary A. Patton
Executive Director
Planning and Conservation League

Despite the recent crisis in the Delta and the Governor's push for new dams, last week the Department of Water Resources (DWR) proposed to give away the largest water storage facility in the state and to eliminate drought safeguards for urban areas in California.

DWR's draft decision, revealed in the Monterey Plus Environmental Impact Report (EIR), would require the State to adopt amendments to the State Water Project (SWP) contract, called the "the Monterey Amendments," negotiated in secret by DWR in 1994. The original behind-closed-doors deal was successfully challenged in a lawsuit by the Planning and Conservation League, the Citizens Planning Association of Santa Barbara, and Plumas County Flood Control and Water Conservation District (Planning and Conservation League v. Department of Water Resources (2000) 83 Cal.App.3d). While DWR has been allowed to operate under the Monterey Amendments provisionally since 1995, the PCL lawsuit forced DWR to analyze the impacts of the amendments and to decide whether or not permanently to adopt the Monterey Amendments based on that analysis.

If permanently adopted, the Monterey Amendments would fundamentally change how the State Water Project operates. Specifically, the Monterey Amendments would:

• Eliminate contract provisions that provide drought safeguards for urban areas. DWR's own analysis shows that in dry years like 2001, water supplies for homes and businesses in urban areas will be reduced by over 400,000 acre-feet (a reduction of 26% of total urban water deliveries from the SWP), if the Monterey Amendments are adopted.

• Give away the State-owned Kern Water Bank, the largest water storage facility in California.

• Eliminate the common-sense provision in the original contract which required DWR to determine the realistic yield of the SWP.
Without knowing the actual capacity of the SWP, DWR will continue to promise to deliver "paper water," water which actually does not exist in the real world. Already, the promise of paper water has lead to over-reliance on the water from the fragile Bay-Delta, over-pumping, inevitable cutbacks in water supplies, and ultimately decreased water supply reliability.