CalFed plan trashed

Monday, October 17, 2005

FOR 10 YEARS, CALFED, a consortium of agricultural, urban, environmental and recreational water interests, has been planning and working to improve Delta water quality and assure reliable supplies to users. But a state appeals court has tossed the 10 years of planning and work into doubt, adding an unwanted burden to a process that already was in trouble.

A unanimous three-judge panel ruled that CalFed officials should have considered cutting Southern California off from using more Delta water.

That has been the dream of some environmentalists and Northern Californians who view the southern part of the state as an unfriendly foreign country.

But CalFed did not indulge in such fantasies. It understood that it is absolutely unfeasible to consider reducing water supplies to the fastest-growing part of the state. The economic havoc it would cause would be immense.

Yet now, if this ruling stands, CalFed is going to have to at least consider cutting back on the flow of Delta water to Southern California. That does not mean CalFed will have to ultimately conclude that it is a good idea.

However, the appeals court decision, if it is upheld by the California Supreme Court, means that CalFed will have to go back to the drawing board and do additional costly studies and likely come up with a plan similar to what it has now.

The decision comes at a particularly inopportune time, when CalFed is under considerable criticism for spending $3 billion, which seemingly has done nothing to improve the Delta ecology.

In fact, just the opposite appears to have occurred with the massive reduction in numbers of some species of fish and other marine life.

One wonders just how accommodating federal or state governments, which fund CalFed, will be in approving more money for more studies, only to end up where CalFed is now.

We believe the appeals court is unrealistic. It said that "population growth is not an immutable fact of life." Perhaps not, but it is pretty darn close. Anyone who believes that Southern California is not going to grow rapidly over the next decade, if not indefinitely, is living in a fantasy land.

Still , CalFed may well have to develop a new record of decision, which the court threw out.

Environmentalists believe the impact of the court ruling is potentially monumental. That would be true if in fact water supplies from Northern California to Southern California were actually cut.

But no one should expect such a result, especially with reduced supplies of Colorado River water to Southern California.

Perhaps the best course of action for CalFed is to either quickly develop a new plan that considers reducing water supplies to the south or devising a new environmental justification for the current plan. The alternative is to rebuild CalFed.

In any case, CalFed has another heavy burden that can only further delay action on safeguarding Delta water and assuring adequate supplies to users.