Las Vegas Review-Journal (Sunday)
Measure steers water to farmers
Long-fractious California issue’s latest solution doesn’t serve fish
WASHINGTON — The California water bill now ready for the president’s signature significantly shifts 25 years of federal policy and culminates a long and fractious campaign that began in the drought-stricken San Joaquin Valley.
About five years in the making, the $558 million bill approved by the Senate early Saturday morning would steer more water to farmers, eases dam construction, and fund desalination and recycling projects.
“I believe these provisions are both necessary, and will help our state,” said Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif.
Feinstein and House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., and their staffs wrote the final water package, which the Senate approved 78-21. They also decided to fold it into a widely popular infrastructure bill, which eased Senate passage.
Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., objected.
“I think it is absolutely a horrible process, a horrible rider,” Boxer said during floor debate Friday. “It’s going to result in pain and suffering among our fishing families.”
Boxer cited, in particular, California’s salmon industry, whose members fear that the diversion of water would deplete rivers critical to salmon reproduction.
Boxer’s post-midnight vote against the Water Infrastructure Improvements for the Nation Act was likely to be the last of her 33-year congressional career. It was a sour ending for her longtime Senate partnership with Feinstein, with whom she’s served since 1993.
Though ultimately futile, Boxer’s stand against the California water bill also foreshadows some of the challenges ahead once the legislation takes effect. They include healing the rifts that pit one region of the state against the other, managing the new Trump administration’s implementation of the law and coping with the inevitable litigation.
“It’s ugly, and it’s wrong, and it’s going to end up at the courthouse door,” Boxer predicted.
This year’s final California water package includes many elements, some of which are not especially controversial.
Non-native predatory fish in the Stanislaus River would be test-targeted for elimination. Money would support water recycling projects in cities such as Sacramento and San Luis Obispo, and to desalination projects like ones proposed for Southern California.
More controversially, the bill streamlines potential construction approval of Western water projects that could include Temperance Flat on the San Joaquin River and Sites Reservoir in the Sacramento Valley. The bill’s funding includes $335 million for the water storage projects, which is only a fraction of their total cost.
With highly technical but important language, the bill also directs the pumping of more water to farms south of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta and seeks to ensure that Sacramento Valley farmers receive WASHINGTON — all of their allocated water.
“This water is for the tens of thousands of small farms that have gone bankrupt, like a melon farmer who sat in my office with tears in his eyes,” Feinstein said.
Boxer, echoing environmentalists, countered that the real beneficiary would be “big agribusiness.”