Steve La Rue
STAFF WRITER

30-Jan-1999 Saturday

Gov. Gray Davis would like to see many voluntary water-transfer agreements arranged in California over the next four years, some of his top advisers said yesterday.

And, they said, the best example of such arrangements so far is a new farm-to-city contract that will bring Imperial Valley water into San Diego County early in the next decade.

"He is very interested in concepts like water marketing and water transfer," said Tal Finney, Davis' director of policy and special adviser.

He congratulated the San Diego County Water Authority for establishing a model for water negotiations.

"We think you have done a marvelous job so far without a lot of hand-holding by the state," Finney said.

The setting was a water forum organized by the authority, which is San Diego County's umbrella water agency. About 50 business, political and water leaders attended the forum at the Bahia Hotel, near Mission Bay.

"This is an administration that genuinely will promote water transfers," said Keith Brackpool. He is chief executive officer of Cadiz Inc., an agricultural land-holding company, and also co-chairman of the governor's Agriculture and Water Transition Team.

"If you sat down with 100 business leaders and asked them what is the number one water issue, 90 percent of them would say reliability," he said. Transfers are an important way to increase reliability, he added.

Meanwhile, a four-year, state-federal effort to find a consensus plan that would fix the environmentally troubled Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta also may benefit from more aggressive pursuit of water transfers in the state, several speakers said.

Some environmental groups have complained that the delta effort, called Cal-Fed, has not been bold enough in exploring and advocating water transfers.

These groups continue to oppose many of Cal-Fed's plans, which include building some new dams to store more water for environmental or urban uses. In recent years, San Diego County has received 15 to 30 percent of its water from Northern California rivers via the delta.

"The environmental community feels that, until we have explored viable water transfers, why should we build more dam projects? And that is not an unreasonable position," said Christine Frahm, a member of the water authority. She was chairwoman of the authority last year and helped guide difficult negotiations leading to the agency's water-transfer contract with the Imperial Irrigation District.

The pact will allow San Diego County to expand its water supply by about one-third over the first 13 to 14 years of the new millennium with conserved Imperial Valley irrigation water.

Passage of state policies and programs to encourage more transfers is expected to ease the environmental groups' concerns regarding the Cal-Fed process.

"Resolution of the Bay Delta hinges very closely on the (Imperial-San Diego) water transfer," said state Sen. Dave Kelley, R-Idyllwild, a member of the Senate Agriculture and Water Resources Committee. His district includes parts of San Diego County.

Statewide standards and policies to encourage and guide water transfer agreements will have a prominent place in a statewide water plan that Davis wants to see developed, Finney said.

"Because of the governor's ties with the environmental community, he will be able to accomplish things that other governors have not been able to accomplish," he said.

Frahm's leadership in negotiating the San Diego-Imperial water transfer was a key reason, she said, that the new governor's transition task force approached her about becoming director of the state Department of Water Resources.

Frahm, a San Diego attorney, said yesterday that she was honored to be approached but had told the governor's team that she is not seeking the post.

"It would obviously be a great challenge, but my focus at the moment is re-establishing my professional career and staying in San Diego," she said.

A former San Diego water expert, Lester Snow, also is considered a strong contender to become the state's top water official. He was the County Water Authority's executive director from March 1989 to March 1995.

Copyright Union-Tribune Publishing Co.