By Eric Brazil
OF THE EXAMINER STAFF
Sunday, November 22, 1998
©1998 San Francisco Examiner

Mediating role seen as crucial in rare chance to resolve age-old issues

The iron rhetoric of political combat still dominates public debate about water in California, but U.S. Secretary of the Interior Bruce Babbitt senses the coming of a consensus that could end the state's water wars, and he's focused on making it happen.

Failure of the current talks to devise a system that serves California's growing economy while minimizing damage to the state's ecosystem is so gruesome to contemplate that Babbitt has gone to extraordinary -- perhaps unprecedented -- efforts to assert hands-on leadership to make it work.

If the talks, called CalFed, collapse, "we'll just stagger along and everyone continues to quarrel, there'll be an ecological crisis in the Delta, fish runs crash toward extinction, and at some point the Endangered Species Act comes into play ..... and you just start shutting down water users," Babbitt said.

"That's the upside of the downside. In the next drought, things will really get nasty," he said.

CalFed, initiated in 1995 to develop balanced solutions to the ecological problems of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta and San Francisco Bay, includes 14 state and federal agencies. It is scheduled to release a next-to-final draft of its water plan before the end of the year.

Babbitt assumed personal leadership of CalFed in May and has flown to California weekly to spend at least a day trying to spur the negotiations among the agricultural, environmental, urban and rural water users and devise a plan satisfying all.

Babbitt believes that California can seize "an opportunity that arises once in a generation" to change a system that that has produced half a century of contention, decimated fisheries and de-watered rivers.

"It's one of those off moments in which everybody has begun to see that although they have veto power to jam the system, and finally they have come face to face with the fact that we could all be ahead by putting this consensus together," Babbitt said. "It's just kind of in the air."

CalFed's most publicly contentious participants -- farmers and environmentalists -- have high praise for Babbitt's efforts, although they sound less optimistic than he professes to be.

The big unanswered question is whether the plan that emerges should call for construction of more surface storage -- dams or off-stream storage structures -- or study its need and feasibility. "That's where we're stuck," said Ronnie Cohen, a resource specialist for the Natural Resources Defense Council.

The make-it-happen guy

Babbitt, all the participants agree, is the make-it-happen guy.

"I really don't think CalFed had any potential at all of coming to closure without Secretary Babbitt stepping in and providing leadership," said Dan Nelson, executive director of the San Luis and Delta Mendota Water Association.

"Babbitt has provided real leadership," said Barry Nelson, senior consultant with Save San Francisco Bay. "It's amazing to see the difference in the room when Babbitt's in it. It's really impressive."

"He's the last best hope for a successful outcome," said Jason Peltier, manager of the Central Valley Project Water Association. "He can knock heads, force people to the table and extract compromises. That's what it's going to take."

Babbitt takes a clear-eyed view of what he can expect to accomplish.

"The skies will not part in a final solution, but there's a surprising kind of confluence that even I, as an old-time water dog, am surprised by," said the 60-year-old secretary, who as governor of Arizona (1978-87) reformed that state's water laws.

And while it's still a work in progress, Babbitt guaranteed the plan won't resuscitate the Peripheral Canal, an idea rejected by California voters in 1982. "There is a solid consensus that we've got lots of possibilities now to improve the system ..... without jumping all the way to an isolated facility," he said.

Hard to overestimate significance

Tim Quinn, deputy general manager of the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, said it is hard to overestimate the importance of the policy decision that Babbitt is endeavoring to shape.

"This is a big deal to the secretary and to California and to everyone in this country," Quinn said. "CalFed, at its core, is about whether we can balance environmental and economic needs into the next century. I think (Babbitt) sees an opportunity not unlike what happened at the beginning of the century, when some farsighted thinking by Teddy Roosevelt charted a radical departure from the past that became the conservation movement," he said.

The battle lines in the water wars are most sharply drawn between farmers and environmentalists. Farmers insist they need more surface storage to guarantee a reliable water supply. Environmentalists say too many dams have already wrecked the state's ecosystems and conservation eliminates the need for more.

Production agriculture has given up all it can reasonably be expected to, Peltier said.

"On the ag water side, we've seen an enormous amount of money and water for ecosystem restoration. We've been good soldiers, and we want to see that translated into a bigger package in the deal," he said.

"We're not opposed to looking at surface storage, but we don't think we need it and we're not sure we can afford it," said Gary Bobker, senior consultant with the Bay Institute of San Rafael.

Babbitt acknowledged in an interview with The Examiner's editorial board that "nobody is rushing to show their bottom line in negotiations."

"Sort of a Kabuki drama"

"A lot of these issues that you folks have drifted into in the last 30 or 40 years are sort of a Kabuki drama, where everybody puts on their uniforms and assumes sort of previously written roles," Babbitt said. "What we are doing now is really digging, digging, digging hard into the facts .Ë.Ë. and the fact is there's a lot of water in this state.

"You've got to make some judgments. You can't go back to 1850 and turn Tulare Lake into a tule swamp and rewater the San Joaquin (River). So the important thing is to make those value judgments on the basis of hard facts, good figures and good science," he said.

Babbitt said no new storage facilities will come unless the package includes strong assurances about conservation, water transfers and marketing.

With that in place, the participants should be willing to start giving serious consideration to new off-stream storage sites, such as San Luis Reservoir in Merced County, which gets its water from the California Aqueduct. In fact, off-stream storage -- which, unlike dams, does not block flowing rivers, but rather stores excess flows for use during dry periods -- can work to the advantage of the Delta and the state's fisheries, he said.

Bay Area Council President Sunne Wright McPeak, who represents urban water users, said she has perceived "a much more aggressive stance on efficient water use" by agricultural and urban interests since Babbitt joined the talks. And "from the environmental side, I think that they are trying to respond to the fact that there is a strong and growing consensus" that excess water should be captured and stored in wet years for use when it's dry.

Flabbergasted by the waste

Babbitt, trained as a geologist as well as a lawyer, "is skilled at these kinds of meetings, pulling people out, listening carefully, summarizing what he's heard and then announcing what he think makes sense," McPeak said. "His grasp of technical detail is amazing."

Coming, as he does, from famously dry Arizona, Babbitt said he is flabbergasted by the amount of water California wastes in normal years, let alone El Nin¦o years like 1998.

Babbitt said the process of "fixing" the Delta, restoring the health of the San Francisco Bay ecosystem and reviving the state's depleted anadromous fisheries, while providing a reliable supply of water for agriculture and high quality water for urban users, is excruciatingly complex. So "the pressure to stay in the game and bring it to a conclusion is ultimately a function of public expectation," he said.

©1998 San Francisco Examiner