On Mon, 3 Mar 2008, California Poppy wrote:
> California's water war heating up By Dan Walters -
> dwalters@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Published 8:02 am PST Monday,
> March 3, 2008
>
> It's been nearly three decades since California has
> experienced a full- scale battle in its perennial war
> over water, but another one may be brewing.
>
> In the late 1970s and early 1980s, then-Gov. Jerry
> Brown, in alliance with Los Angeles Mayor Tom
> Bradley, mounted a drive to build a "peripheral
> canal" to trans****t Sacramento River water around the
> Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta to the head of the
> California Aqueduct.
>
> The Brown-Bradley alliance found itself at war with a
> strange- bedfellows coalition of environmentalists
> and San Joaquin Valley agribusiness cor****ations, the
> former opposed to expanding water ex****ts and the
> latter opposed to the restrictions that Brown had
> hoped would placate environmental groups.
>
> The battle raged for months, with acrimonious
> committee hearings and heated floor debates. On one
> night, the peripheral canal bill faced a committee
> whose decisive vote would be cast by a senator who
> was a notorious lush. A Los Angeles city lobbyist was
> assigned to baby-sit the senator, and when the
> lawmaker bolted from the hearing room, the lobbyist
> tracked him to a nearby bar and persuaded him to
> return for the final roll call.
>
> It cost Brown a state office building to get one key
> vote, but he finally moved the bill through the
> Legislature. The opposition coalition immediately
> challenged it via referendum and in 1982 persuaded
> voters to reject the canal.
>
> The peripheral canal battle made subsequent governors
> and legislatures leery of approaching California's
> water conflict. Brown's successor, Republican George
> Deukmejian, took a half-hearted swipe at it, and
> Republican Pete Wilson tried to resolve it with a
> collaborative process of Delta improvements that
> eventually collapsed. Democrat Gray Davis ignored it
> altogether. Now Republican Arnold Schwarzenegger is
> attacking it with his usual gusto.
>
> Schwarzenegger wants to revive the peripheral canal,
> which is probably still the best solution to the
> interrelated problems of maintaining deliveries while
> protecting the Delta's fragile environment. The
> courts have been ordering reductions in pumping out
> of the Delta to protect endangered fish species,
> creating much angst among water agencies south of the
> Delta.
>
> Schwarzenegger created a task force to study the
> Delta, but has also moved to put the peripheral canal
> back on the agenda, alarming its many foes. Last
> week, after it was re****ted that Schwarzenegger might
> issue a unilateral order to begin preliminary work on
> a canal project, state Senate leaders urged him to
> back away, saying any such action would make it
> "difficult to negotiate seriously" on an overall
> water policy. For years, state water officials have
> contended that they have the authority under current
> law to build a peripheral canal without further
> legislative authorization.
>
> Two days later, Schwarzenegger replied, insisting
> that he's not acting alone although warning that the
> Delta "is in jeopardy of collapsing without both
> immediate action and long-term solutions."
>
> A coalition of business and agriculture groups,
> meanwhile, is working on a ballot measure that would
> bypass long-stalled negotiations in the Capitol on
> the peripheral canal and additional reservoirs, and
> environmentalists who oppose both are gearing up for
> a ballot war.
>
> The war over water isn't so much about water as it is
> about competing visions of how California should
> develop. And the Capitol's chronic inability to
> resolve the water issue is emblematic of its
> dysfunction on all big issues, including the
> deficit-ridden state budget, health care, education
> and trans****tation.
>
> Chances are that Schwarzenegger's governor****p will
> end without water being settled. At the moment, his
> most likely successor may be Jerry Brown, who has
> returned to politics as attorney general.
>
> What goes around comes around.
This is still going on? Probably the only solution
acceptable to all parties is to desalinate ocean water.
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