Commentary by Carolee Krieger, President and Executive Director of the California Water Impact Network
NOTE: The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of Maven’s Notebook.
Part One: The State Water Project
California’s water policy history is a skewed obverse of the Robin Hood story. The State has taken from the poor – low-income ratepayers, small farmers, tribal and underserved communities, the fishing sector – and given to the rich: wealthy Central Valley corporate growers and Southern California developers.
As California’s population and agricultural production grew in the early 20th Century, state officials developed plans to divert most of the water from Northern California to the Central Valley and Southern California’s burgeoning cities. With support from the federal government, the Central Valley Project (CVP) was completed in the 1930s to supply water to the valley’s agricultural dynasties. Spurred by Southern California’s explosive growth following World War II, state officials subsequently hatched plans for a sister project to the CVP: the State Water Project (SWP).
Completed in 1960, the SWP was a behemoth public undertaking by any measure, then or now, ultimately consisting of more than 700 miles of canals, tunnels and pipelines, 36 storage facilities, five hydropower plants, 21 pumping stations, and four pumping-generating plants. Though complex in construction and implementation, the SWP had a direct and simple purpose: to transport massive volumes of water from the Sacramento/San Joaquin Delta to San Joaquin Valley agriculture and Southern California urban development. Currently, the SWP provides approximately 30% of the water supply to 19 million people in Southern California and irrigates about 750,000 acres of farmland at rates that are highly subsidized relative to the costs paid by urban water agencies.
As originally envisioned, the SWP would have controlled every major river system north of Sacramento. Along with damming the Feather River, plans called for reservoirs on the Klamath, Eel, Smith and Mad Rivers, with a vast system of supporting tunnels and canals to shunt the water south. However, due to increasing environmental concerns from the public, the scheme to dam these northern coastal rivers eventually was dropped, and the Feather River alone was developed.
As a result, the SWP has failed to provide the abundant, cheap water for urban development that the project’s engineers, planners, and politicians envisioned. Nevertheless, their dream of unconstrained supply lives on through the creation of water rights that amount to five times more water than is available in the SWP system. This “paper water” – that is, water that exists in state documents but not in the reservoirs controlled by the SWP – is the itch that California Governors, agribusiness titans, and economic developers cannot keep from scratching. Since the SWP’s completion, there have always been plans to expand its delivery capacity, no matter the cost or consequences.
A prime example: After California was hammered by a severe drought in the late 1970s then-governor Jerry Brown (son of SWP originator Pat Brown) pushed for a “peripheral canal” to expedite water deliveries from the Delta to the south. But voters properly perceived the scheme as exorbitantly expensive and environmentally destructive and rejected it in a 1982 referendum.
That defeat, followed by another severe drought with reduced SWP supplies in the late 1980s, angered the Central Valley agricultural barons who were building empires from SWP water; they realized they needed greater control over the SWP to keep the water and the profits flowing. They therefore resolved to change the rules of the game.
This push to change SWP operations was led by a representative of the Wonderful Company, a firm owned by billionaires Stewart and Lynda Resnick, a Southern California “power couple” who have donated lavishly to politicians of both parties to ensure their financial interests are protected. In an unpublicized conference held in Monterey in 1994, state officials and four of the largest water contractors in California – along with a representative of the Resnicks – quietly transferred millions of acre feet of water from the public trust to corporate agriculture.
The Resnicks came out of the meeting with a 57 Percent stake in the Kern Water Bank, a capacious aquifer complex that can hold 1.5-million-acre feet of water and is recharged by the SWP. Prior to this “Monterey Amendments” agreement, the Kern Water Bank functioned as an emergency supply for Southern California ratepayers during drought. After the agreement, the water bank essentially became a private asset for agribusiness plutocrats, one supported by the public infrastructure of the State of California and the hard-earned dollars of ratepayers and taxpayers.
Santa Barbara County residents were also shaken by the water supply crisis created by the 1987-1992 drought, and in 1991 they voted to join the SWP, approving the construction of a “Coastal Branch” aqueduct. The Coastal Branch was completed in 1997 – but it has never provided its targeted deliveries due to the SWP’s “paper water” problem – oversubscription unsupported by actual water, especially during drought periods. Instead of drought security, Santa Barbara County ratepayers were saddled with ruinous debt.
DWR’s original cost estimate for the Coastal Branch came in at $270 million – a price tag that seemed reasonable to drought-afflicted residents, given agency assurances of true “water security.” But construction costs alone were $550 million; maintenance and debt service are on track to hit $1.76 billion by 2035. For that investment, Central Coast residents incurred an obligation that will burden their grandchildren – without achieving any water security.
Despite this cautionary tale and in the face of overwhelming evidence that California’s water conveyance projects are causing massive environmental destruction, the state’s economic elite continue to proclaim the need for SWP expansion.
But even while cheerleading for increased SWP supplies, Southern California water agencies have read the writing on the wall; from the 1990s to the present, they have invested in conservation and increased local supplies. As a result, they are less dependent on the SWP – but rising costs are creating an affordability crisis that state leaders have thus far refused to address.
Meanwhile, the Resnicks and other agribusiness behemoths have amassed vast fortunes while simultaneously exacerbating the water crisis by planting thousands of acres of permanent and water-intensive export crops such as almonds and pistachios. Now, with implementation of the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act and the potential for new Delta freshwater flow requirements, corporate growers once again feel their gravy train is threatened.
Enter the Delta Conveyance Project (DCP), a retread of the peripheral canal. Like its ill-fated predecessor, the DCP would shunt vast volumes of water from the Delta to the south. The main difference between the two: instead of a canal, the DCP would move the water through a gigantic subterranean tunnel.
Governor Newsom – whose campaigns have been funded heavily by the Resnicks and other agricultural interests – is aggressively pushing for the DCP as a means of “stabilizing” SWP deliveries. The project’s $60-$100 billion price tag would be funded through ratepayer fees and property taxes, placing an enormous burden on Southern California residents. The biggest disconnect here: Southern California municipalities don’t need the additional water the DCP would deliver. The main beneficiaries – unsurprisingly – would be agribusiness and developers in inland desert areas.
Confronted with this clear bait-and-switch, again we must ask: Why do Newsom and his allies support the DCP, given it runs counter to the public interest?
Of course, we’re being a bit disingenuous here: we already know the answer. California’s water delivery infrastructure serves the powerful few over the interests of the many because the main beneficiaries contribute lavishly to the campaigns and Political Action Committees of lawmakers. In short, if you want to know where the water will go tomorrow, it’s simple: just follow the money today.
In future releases, C-WIN will document the full extent of the agricultural contributions that influence state water policy.
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Carolee Krieger C-WIN President and Executive Director: Carolee Krieger founded the California Water Impact Network in 2001 with Dorothy Green, Michael Jackson, and Yvon Chouinard. Though a longtime activist, the Monterey Amendments prompted Krieger to formalize her efforts by establishing C-WIN as a 501(c)-3, and broadening her network of public advocates focused on California water equity issues.
The California Water Impact Network is a state-wide organization that advocates for the equitable and sustainable use of California’s freshwater resources for all Californians.
