By Chris Gilbert, with thanks to Ron Stork of Friends of the River
We are very pleased that California voters rejected Proposition 3, the poorly crafted, pay-to-play water bond. Prop. 3 would have sent $750 million taxpayer dollars to reconstruct the San Joaquin Valley’s Friant-Kern Canal — an infrastructure project that’s failing because excessive groundwater pumping has caused the ground to sink. We believe that the project beneficiaries (the agricultural interests that caused the ground subsidence in the first place) should have to foot the bill for the canal repair, which they will now have to do. Plus, with that $750 million off the table, the effort and money that could have gone towards dam projects like the proposed Temperance Flat Dam will have to be spent on the Canal. The Sierra Club opposes new dams in California.
Some also postulated that Prop. 3 passage would have freed up money that could be spent on the WaterFix (Delta tunnels) project, which environmental groups resoundingly oppose. At the least, the repair of the Friant-Kern Canal would increase the San Joaquin Valley’s capacity to accept — and demand — more Delta water that might eventually be made available via the Delta tunnels. Funding projects designed to capitalize on Delta water from the WaterFix project would have flown in the face of the Brown administration’s promises not to fund the tunnels project with taxpayer dollars.
Finally, with the GOP holding on to House seats in the San Joaquin Valley (especially the seats held by Nunes, Valadao, and McCarthy), it will, counterintuitively, be more politically palatable for the House Democrats to oppose dams and other taxpayer-subsidized agricultural water projects. They will not be under pressure to support vulnerable freshman Democrats who might have taken stands on water issues more closely aligned with agricultural and Republican interests.
The wild card in all this is how strongly Senators Dianne Feinstein (who has sided with large agricultural interests in the past) and Kamala Harris hold off unacceptable projects, especially from the lame-duck Republican House.
Chris Gilbert is co-chair of the Bay Chapter's Water Committee.
Photo: Friant-Kern Canal, courtesy Tommy Lee Kreger via Flickr Creative Commons.