Published
4 years agoon
Water supply is clearly the most important long-term issue affecting California’s future. It’s also the most politically complicated.
Brown’s State Water Resources Control Board has been demanding that farmers along the lower San Joaquin River and its tributaries use less water so that more can flow through the Delta to enhance habitat for fish and other species.
Using the pending board order as a political club, Brown wants the farmers to voluntarily improve habitat restoration so that the diversions into the Delta could be eased.
However, the Donald Trump administration simultaneously has been pushing to give more water to farmers and, inferentially, send less through the Delta, offsetting federal court orders that have reduced agricultural supplies.
The WIN Act extension would, at least in theory, make restoration easier and make farmers’ water deliveries more predictable. It also would provide more than $670 million in federal funds for water storage projects that farmers and other water interests have been demanding to increase supply.
While Feinstein, Brown and McCarthy are supporting the deal, it still must pass muster with the rest of Congress and, most importantly, get Trump’s blessing.
Neither is guaranteed – if for no other reason than it’s being attached to a broader spending bill that’s hung up over Trump’s demand for money to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.
Environmental groups dislike the proposal, seeing it as a backdoor way of reducing Delta flows and/or a way of expediting one of Brown’s pet projects, twin tunnels that would divert Sacramento River water under the Delta, rather than through it.
Dan Walters has been a journalist for nearly 60 years, spending all but a few of those years working for California newspapers. He has written more than 9,000 columns about the state and its politics and is the founding editor of the “California Political Almanac.” Dan has also been a frequent guest on national television news shows, commenting on California issues and policies.
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