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Stealth Delta Legislation Unveiled - CSPA's initial take: promises to fish restoration, guarantees to exporters

by Bill Jennings, Executive Director

August 4, 2009 -- The stealth package of water bills has now been brought into the sunlight.  The five bills that were gutted and passed out of Policy Committees have now been reformatted and released.  They will be heard in a joint conference committee and then moved to the floor of the respective houses for a vote.  CSPA has quickly reviewed the reformatted bills and has the following initial reaction.  An in-depth review will follow in the next day or so.

As expected, the five bills comprise a roadmap to a peripheral canal.  In a stunning abdication of legislative responsibility and due diligence, the package authorizes the creation of a Delta Stewardship Council comprised of four members appointed by the Governor, two from the legislature and the Chairperson of the Delta Protection Commission.  The Council would have authority to implement a peripheral canal and assess fees and issue bonds to pay for it.  In other words, our legislature proposes to allow the Governor, who strenuously advocates building a peripheral canal, the authority to appoint a majority of members to a Council that has authority to build and fund it.

The five bills are: AB 39, the Delta Plan (Huffman), AB 49, Water Conservation (Feuer), SB 12, Delta Governance (Simitian), SB 229, Water Use Reporting (Pavley) and SB 458, Delta Conservancy (Wolk).

Collectively, the bills are a legislative shell game that raises bureaucratic mumbo jumbo to an art form. While there are some good things to like (i.e., no new dams, conservation, and beneficiary pays principle), the total package is a bureaucratic nightmare and a Valhalla for attorneys.  It pays lip service to fish and Delta restoration, turns the water code upside down, places a financial and water burden on the most senior upstream water rights holders and will double or triple water rates for those least able to pay - in order to subsidize the guarantee of water to the most junior water rights holders that grow subsidized crops on drainage impaired lands on the Westside of the San Joaquin Valley; lands that when irrigated leach toxic wastes back to the San Joaquin River and Delta.

In sum, the package reminds us of the time the Legislature panicked and rushed into energy deregulation without thoughtfully considering the consequences.  But, energy deregulation only cost us $43 billion.  This package may end up costing us that much and kill the Delta, northern California fisheries and Delta farming along the way.