Gubernatorial candidates call for investment in water infrastructure

By WES SANDER

Capital Press

After declaring victory on a long-fought effort to connect the state and federal water projects with a new pipeline, politicians and government officials are hoping they can build momentum for solving California's continuing water challenges.

At an Oct. 14 groundbreaking ceremony near Tracy, U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar called the project -- the Delta-Mendota Canal/California Aqueduct Intertie, a short pipeline that will connect the federal and state conveyance facilities -- a demonstration of what state and federal agencies can accomplish together.

"Something that started decades ago is now becoming reality," Salazar said. "While we celebrate the progress today .. we have some very significant challenges ahead of us."

Those challenges hinge on management of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, the hub of state water conveyance. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, having made the Delta a signature issue, will leave office next year with his administration continuing work on his Bay Delta Conservation Plan.

The plan, in the works for several years, centers on a proposed canal or tunnel that would convey water south before it reaches the Delta. Salazar said the feds are committed to Schwarzenegger's plan, but said uncertainty lingers over how a new governor will approach it.

State Attorney General and gubernatorial candidate Jerry Brown recently released campaign materials calling for "conveyance and storage investments, such as a peripheral canal or tunnel."

Brown's Republican opponent, former eBay CEO Meg Whitman, has also said she supports the Delta conveyance.

The plan aims to stabilize the estuary's ecosystems while making water deliveries more predictable. But it has remained controversial, with Delta landowners calling it a means of sending more Delta water to Southern California. A similar proposal for a "peripheral canal" was defeated by voters in the 1980s.

But the Intertie project, with its coordination between state and federal agencies, is heralded by officials as a model for how agency heads can work together.

The Intertie is "the signal project that will signify that we're going to quit fighting and put together that team that's going to save this great state," said U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, who is regarded as a moderating voice in the state's water battles.

First conceived two decades ago, the Intertie has been anticipated by farm-water interests as one answer to California's water-supply challenges. Water managers have called it an important element for adding flexibility to the state's conveyance. California's recent drought has accentuated a need for moving water to areas with greater need.

The Intertie idea has been tossed around since the early '90s. The concept originated as a means of bypassing sections of the federal Delta-Mendota Canal where land subsidence had degraded capacity. In 2004, the San Luis and Delta-Mendota Water Authority commissioned a study that spurred it forward.

Federal stimulus funding contributed $15.8 million of the project's $28 million cost. CALFED, a state-federal collaboration aimed at restoration of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, contributed $8.8 million. The remainder came from the federal Bureau of Reclamation and other sources.

The Bureau said the state's water contractors will begin repaying the total cost once the pipeline is up and running in 2012.

"The significance of this project ... is momentum," California Natural Resources Secretary Lester Snow said. "If we stop moving, we've failed."