Posted on Thu, May. 26, 2005
By Mike Taugher
CONTRA COSTA TIMES
The head of a
state agency meant to improve the Delta environment
and stabilize water supplies from the Bay Area to
Southern California was replaced Wednesday after
months of criticism and concern that its programs
were falling into disarray.
Patrick Wright, 44, has been a key figure in the water
effort since 1995 and became the first head of the
Bay-Delta Authority when it was created in 2003.
He will move to the Resources Agency, where he will
serve as assistant secretary.
Wright, who was recently hospitalized for a heart
condition, said his move was voluntary.
"I've been at this for a decade.
It's time for someone else to steer the course for another 10 years," he
said.
The top job at the Bay-Delta Authority, which runs
a program called CalFed, now goes to Joe Grindstaff,
the former chief deputy in the Department of Water
Resources.
In another key shift, the Bay-Delta Authority's lead
scientist plans to leave the agency for personal reasons
unrelated to problems at the agency, Grindstaff said.
The moves come at a low point for a
highly ambitious 10-year-old program that many consider
key to avoiding explosive statewide conflicts over
California water policies, which seek to balance the
health of the Delta environment with demands for water
from urban and farming customers.
In the early 1990s, fish kills and the overall
decline of the Delta were leading to unpredictable
curtailments of water deliveries to Contra Costa County,
Central Valley farmers and Southern California.
CalFed was designed to fix that. But after spending
more than $3 billion in local, state and federal money
since 2000, the program has drained available bond
funds and still has no stable financing plan to continue
for more than a few more years.
And one of the top problems that CalFed
was designed to avoid has now surfaced and taken the
agency by surprise: As reported May 1 in the Contra
Costa Times, the Delta is suffering a widespread ecological
collapse that could again lead to water delivery curtailments
to Southern California and the Central Valley.
"It's not as much progress
as we'd like to do," Grindstaff acknowledged.
Although state lawmakers
and water officials in recent months have been increasingly
critical of Wright and of what they say is a lack of
leadership at the authority, others say he was in an
impossible position.
There is no way, some say, to allow more
water to be pumped out of the Delta and improve ecological
conditions at the same time. The program's emphasis
on cooperation meant Wright had little authority to
force adversaries to give up their competing demands.
"You
can have your cake and eat it too -- that's the unspoken motto of CalFed," said
Gary Bobker, program director at the Bay Institute
and a member of a key CalFed advisory committee.
When the money started running out and the Delta
fish crash surfaced, Bobker said it became obvious
that a program promising water agencies, environmentalists
and farmers that they would all get what they wanted
could not work.
"I'm surprised he's lasted this long. He had an
impossible job," Bobker said.
Grindstaff said expectations for CalFed
will have to be scaled back.
The latest plan called for $800 million a
year for the next 10 years in habitat restoration,
stabilizing Delta levees, increasing the capacity to
pump water out of the Delta and programs to improve
water quality, among other things. But so far, CalFed
has been unable to levy fees to pay for any of that,
instead relying largely on public bonds.
"Stakeholders have said we want to do everything .... but we don't want
to pay," Grindstaff said.
By Nov. 1, Grindstaff said, the agency would
complete an auditlike review to determine "where has
money been allocated and was it allocated appropriately.
What have we done right and what have we done wrong."
The agency will also trim the program to a more realistic
scope and come up with a plan to finance it for the
next 10 years, he said.
Contra Costa Water District assistant general manager
Greg Gartrell said there is more bond money still available
than CalFed has realized, and he added that water users
have offered to negotiate to pay more fees.
He agreed
the program would have to be scaled back. But he said
that if it failed, the consequences could be severe.
"The alternative is the chaos in the
system in the early 1990s when you never knew when your supplies would be cut
off. And they were cut off," Gartrell said. "That means,
for our customers, worse water quality and uncertainty
in their supplies."