By Hank Shaw,
Capitol Bureau Chief
Wednesday, April
20, 2005
SACRAMENTO — A coalition of state and federal agencies gathered to restore the health and security of the Delta has failed, lawmakers said at a hearing Tuesday.
The coalition, called CALFED, was supposed to act as a sort of conductor, orchestrating the various state, federal and local groups working in the Delta into a symphony of coordination and progress. Now that symphony has degenerated into cacophony, and lawmakers are threatening to close the show.
Years of bickering and billions in taxpayer dollars have produced few improvements to the Delta, essentially the heart of California’s water supply. On the contrary, environmental conditions continue to worsen and the levees that hold back the salty San Francisco Bay continue to fall.
So the Legislature will almost certainly strip funding for the coalition and leave it on life support for a year to work out its problems. If CALFED fails that, lawmakers could junk it altogether.
State Sens. Mike Machado of Linden and Sheila Kuehl of Santa Monica – two of the Legislature’s most powerful members on water issues – blasted CALFED’s director Tuesday for failing to devise both a realistic budget and concrete goals for restoring the environment and improving the security of the Delta, upon which 22 million Californians rely for their drinking water.
"I am increasingly intolerant of what I perceive as a lack of fiscal discipline" by the coalition, Kuehl said.
CALFED’s budget hinges on what critics say are hallucinogenic estimates of state and federal funding, and a system of water-user fees that has yet to extend beyond the theoretical.
Congress already has authorized $389 million for the coalition’s activities, but the road between authorizing money and actually appropriating it is often perilous. U.S. Rep. Richard Pombo, R-Tracy, said recently that the lean federal budget will probably claim much of the promised money.
On the state side, lawmakers say CALFED will not receive any new money and note that it will be only one of many competitors for the remaining money in a pot of bond funds that voters approved recently. Machado is another competitor; bond money would fund his proposal to restore water flows in the San Joaquin River.
That leaves the user fees.
Machado said developing a system of realistic fees to help fund Delta water projects – whoever benefits from the projects would pay some of the tab – was critical to developing that budget. He called CALFED Director Patrick Wright a "spokesman for indecision" and said his lack of leadership has led to that failure.
"Do you ever take a stand on anything?" Machado asked.
Wright said broaching the topic of user fees certainly qualified as a stand. "This was a big leap. Yeah, we took a stand. Half the water community was violently opposed to this."
Ultimately, those proposed fees would mean homeowners and businesses would pay more for their water.
One idea floated would have added $12 to $24 a year to a homeowner’s water bill. Others would have levied fees on the water agencies themselves — such as the Stockton East Water District or Central San Joaquin Water Conservation District — and those agencies would likely charge consumers more to offset the extra costs.
But support for a "Delta tax," whatever form it might take, would wither unless taxpayers had a clear understanding about what they’d get for their money, said Brent Walthall of the Kern County Water Agency.
Walthall said CALFED has spent more than $1 billion to restore the Delta’s environment, yet the endangered Delta smelt are at their lowest numbers in 35 years. He asked why would his agency want to throw good money after bad?
Kuehl said Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger must also play a role. She said she’s seen no real direction from the administration, and without that direction any fee imposed on water users would also fail – and CALFED along with it.
"This administration has to take a more serious interest and a more muscular tone on this," she said. "It shouldn’t be too difficult."
A spokesman for the governor said the administration is taking the issue seriously. As for CALFED, Wright suggested that a more developed fee proposal will appear as part of Schwarzenegger’s scheduled May revision of the state budget.
Machado and Kuehl say that’s not good enough. Doing so wouldn’t give lawmakers enough time to analyze the proposal, which is expected to be complex. They said even if a proposal shows up in the revised budget, they will still strip funding from the coalition until all parties can accept a fee schedule.
"CALFED is doomed to a pretty thin gruel for funding this year," Kuehl said.
To reach Capitol Bureau Chief Hank Shaw, phone (916) 441-4078 or e-mail sacto@recordnet.com