Assemblywoman collects comments on water shortage, bonds
| Friday, Mar 20 2009 02:21 PM
Last Updated Monday, Mar 30 2009 04:25 PM
No less than five state bond proposals are on the table to address the water infrastructure that has aggravated an ongoing drought, and Assemblywoman Jean Fuller, R-Bakersfield, wants voters to weigh in on which one is the best solution to chronic water shortages.
“We’re collecting data from our local water purveyors,” she said at a town hall meeting she conducted Friday in the Kern County Board of Supervisors chambers. “We will translate it into policy and support whichever of the five water bonds matches the data best.”
A long-term plan to address issues such as federally restricted pumping from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta is being drafted, but the environmental impact report could take up to a year and a half, and will likely face court challenges.
In the meantime, emergency measures to address the crisis in the short-term need to be implemented, said Fuller, who serves as vice-chair of the Assembly’s Water, Parks and Wildlife Committee. Her 32nd district includes part of Bakersfield, as well as Frazier Mountain communities, Ridgecrest, Taft, Tehachapi and the Kern River Valley.
Near-term options include asking federal courts to ease pumping restrictions and seeking grants for infrastructure work that could be done quickly.
Longer-term projects are proposed in AB 1187, sponsored by Assemblymember Jared Huffman, D-San Rafael; SB 735, sponsored by Sen. Darrell Steinberg, D-Sacramento; SB 456, sponsored by Sen. Lois Wolk, D-Davis; SB 371, sponsored by Sen. Dave Cogdill, R-Modesto; and SB 301, sponsored by Sen. Dean Florez, D-Shafter.
All of them would invest various amounts in water management and conservation projects, including groundwater storage and water recycling. Some would introduce new water fees.
Kern County Supervisor Ray Watson said there is no choice but to swallow the bitter pill of expensive improvements to fix a system that has been broken for a long time.
The water system was originally built for far fewer people than it now serves, he said, and was initially constructed with the intention of drawing water from the Feather River north of the delta. That river was subsequently granted protection in the federal National Wild & Scenic Rivers Program, so it is not available for use in the Central Valley, Watson said, and the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers simply aren’t adequate to meet the region’s needs.
Fred Starrh is a member of the board of directors of the Kern County Water Agency and patriarch of Starrh and Starrh Farms, a family-owned operation in western Kern County that grows cotton, pistachios, almonds and alfalfa.
He was glad to hear almost all the speakers Friday agree that drastic changes are needed, and called for relief from the federal court ruling on pumping to protect the endangered delta smelt.
“We have a regular drought and a regulatory drought,” he said. “I think we all expect to live through the natural droughts that come and go, but when you have a regulatory drought, when they’re running hundreds of thousands of acre feet of water out to the ocean at a time like this, that’s unreasonable.”
