By: Jessica Iñiguez
Restore the Delta
That was Senator Lois Wolk’s description of AB 2775, a bill that would amend the water bond to remove language that would allow nongovernmental partners to be part of joint powers authorities formed to own and manage dams.
Why the urgency? In a deeply flawed water bond, the joint powers provision is one of the deepest flaws. Organizations opposing the water bond have noted that this provision would open the gate for more entities like the Kern Water Bank, where private investors profit from public infrastructure investments. The legislature wants to get it out of the water bond before the Secretary of State prepares the measure for the November ballot.
So why did Wolk, alone among the senators on the committee, vote against the amendment? Because, as she noted, the amendment makes the bond more palatable, but “This won’t eliminate the possibility of gaming the system.”
The real problem is with Section 6252 of the Government Code, which allows mutual water companies to enter into joint powers agreements with public agencies. For example, Westside Mutual Water Company is the entity that allows Stewart Resnick to control the Kern Water Bank. Removing the reference to nongovernmental partners from the bond won’t eliminate mutual water companies or change the Government Code.
Huffman admitted that this is a problem, but he wants to fix it some other time. Cogdill said he was surprised at the attention the issue had received. A number of legislators who voted for the water bond reportedly didn’t even notice the provision.
We wonder what else in the water bond they didn’t notice.
AB 2775 will require a 2/3 vote of the legislature, and requires fiscal committee review. Did we mention that it is urgent?
And while we’re tweaking things . . .
In their enthusiasm to pass the “historic water package” last November and create a Delta Stewardship Council to put things right in the Delta, lawmakers neglected to address the matter of paying for the Council.
To correct this oversight, Assemblymember Huffman presented AB 2092, a long-term financing plan for the DSC, to the Senate Natural Resources and Water Committee.
AB 2092 requires the DSC to develop a financing plan based on the “beneficiary pays” principle. This will involve defining private and public benefits, as well as identifying both benefits and negative impacts of any action.
A variety of financing strategies will be necessary. Huffman emphasized that any new fees would be subject to legislative approval. Both supporters and opponents focused on this issue of fees. Delta county representatives supported the bill but noted that fees need to be proportional to the benefits received, and that there should be a provision for fees to be offset by previous work. Several upstream water districts opposed the bill, expressing concerns that they could be charged for downstream impacts.
The bill contains a provision for crediting beneficiaries who “prepay,” coming forward in advance with money to pay for “time-sensitive” projects. Kathy Cole, representing the MWD, testified that larger urban water users would be the most likely to make use of this option. Senator Alex Padilla expressed concerns that the “prepay” strategy might influence outcomes. But Huffman insisted that that kind of “undue influence” will be avoided through “vigorous oversight.”
Unfortunately, we have seen how much difficulty Huffman’s Water, Parks, and Wildlife Committee has had already in overseeing the activities of the DSC.
Just to clarify one little point about beneficiaries: Huffman said that any diverter IN the Delta is diverting FROM the Delta. While his statement may be true in the grammatical and logistical sense, he forgot about a few codes like riparian and pre 1914 water rights, as well as the North Delta Water Agency Contract. Delta users are not beneficiaries diverting surplus Delta water. They are the Delta community, and the Delta is tied to their homes and their livelihood. Lumping them in with the State Water Project and Central Valley Project water exporters ignores a hundred years of California water law, and sets a dangerous precedent for blaming the victim in the mismanagement of the Delta.
Feinstein’s favor for Resnick et al. is still a bad idea
Senator Dianne Feinstein’s S. 1759, “Water Transfer Facilitation Act of 2009,” is on the U.S. Senate Legislative Calendar, and opponents fear that it could be included in omnibus legislation. This is the legislation that would relax the law in order to benefit the Kern Water Bank and other private entities profiting from taxpayer subsidized water and infrastructure. It would allow high flows in the San Joaquin River, crucial to the Delta’s ecological health, to be diverted outside of the CVP service area and to non-CVP contractors for use in the state’s multi-billion dollar private water sales market.
Under the legislation, federally subsidized $20 an acre foot water could be resold in the open market for more than $1000 an acre foot. Environmental review would be relaxed, with a single programmatic EIR used for the Central Valley Project transfers. This would help hide the environmental impacts of individual transfers.
Restore the Delta has joined conservation and fisheries communities in asking the chairs of the Committee on Energy & Natural Resources and the Subcommittee on Water and Power to prevent this legislation from advancing.
Confirmation of something we guessed
Writing in the California Progress Report, Alegria De La Cruz, Legal Director of the Center on Race, Poverty and the Environment, talks about those farmworker demonstrations on the Westside last summer:
“What about the ‘spontaneous’ demonstrations by farmworkers marching under the ‘Fish vs. Jobs’ banner? Go talk to the laborers in the small destitute towns of the regions such as Five Points, Firebaugh, Mendota and Dos Palos. I have. If you can gain their confidence, they’ll tell you, as they’ve told me: these demonstrations were orchestrated by farm labor contractors and their employers. Workers were either strongly ‘encouraged’ to joint the demonstrations with the implication that their jobs were at stake, or were simply paid to march. This is not meant as a criticism of the marchers; on the Westside, you cannot afford to pass up a day’s wages. The system is designed that way.”
De La Cruz’s family has been fighting corporate agriculture on the Westside for three generations. You can read the whole article, “Tales of the Westside” at http://www.californiaprogressreport.com/site/?q=node/7871
