By Jon Klusmire
Register Staff

10-20-2007

The California Legislature has more work to do and will probably have to convene in a special session next month to tackle the two biggest issues in the state, water and healthcare reform.

That was the prediction recently delivered to the Inyo County Board of Supervisors by Assemblyman Bill Maze, who represents Inyo County and the 34th Assembly District.
During a brief visit with the supervisors, Maze also touched on his feelings and ideas about a range of other issues, from voting machines to prisons to wildlife.
But the state’s water woes got the most attention, with Maze outlining those problems and strongly urgingthe county and local residents to support a $9 billion water-infrastructure improvement and construction program unveiled last month by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.
A key element in the governor’s plan is building new dams, and Maze said it’s about time that the state added to its current inventory of dams and reservoirs.  
Maze said the state’s dam-building days ended about 40 years ago. New dams were completed in 1958 and 1959, in 1960 and, lastly, in 1964.

Assemblyman Bill Maze talks with Inyo County Health and Human Services Director Jean Dickinson about the status of the effort to overhaul the state’s healthcare system. Maze updated the Board of Supervisors about a number of state issues, with water topping the list. Photo by Jon Klusmire

Since then, “there has been no added capacity” to the state’s reservoir/water storage system, he said. Instead, state voters have approved a long list of propositions that pumped $45 billion into water-related programs and projects, but none of those included building new or expanding existing reservoirs.  
With the majority of the water for central and southern California coming from snowmelt running off the Sierra, residents, towns, farms and water districts are at the whim of Mother Nature. Worse than a drought almost is an above average snow year, Maze noted, because then those water users can only stand idly by while millions of acre-feet of water flow by and head downstream to the ocean.
“When Mother Nature turns loose, we need buckets to catch it,” is how Maze summarized the need for new reservoirs to collect and store water during wet years so it can be used during dry years.
But the idea of building dams is controversial, both because of the costs involved and the environmental impacts, he said. Unfortunately, the state’s current water storage systems are at capacity and simply cannot be relied upon to provide enough water to meet growing demand from increased population, industry and agriculture, he said. Only new dams and reservoirs and added groundwater recharge can add to the state’s water supplies.
“But some people just don’t get it.”
Schwarzenegger proposed to include $5.1 billion for “surface storage” in his water plan.
This might be the year, however, when a combination of dramatic developments combine to force California’s citizens to start to “get it,” in more ways than one. Millions of Californians could get an understanding of the shortcomings of the current statewide water system when they start to see water restrictions being imposed or see water bills go up.  
Maze ticked off what has come to be seen as a perfect storm of bad water news that has pushed the current system into what the governor and others consider a crisis.
A court ruling has forced a one-third reduction in the amount of water that can be diverted from the Sacramento/San Joaquin Delta. The water must stay in the river to help protect the endangered Delta Smelt, the judge ruled. The governor’s proposal includes $1.9 billion for improvements to the delta’s system of pumps, canals, dikes, etc.
That reduction in the amount of water flowing south has prompted the Metropolitan Water District to announce that it will be raising water rates to the water districts, towns and cities it serves. Plus, it will be cutting back the amount of water it can deliver to Southern California. Maze said those cutbacks could eventually total about a 30 percent reduction for both Los Angeles and San Diego.
Those cities and the rest of Southern California cannot look to the Colorado River to bolster supplies. For decades, California received more than its allotment of Colorado River water, but legal rulings and more usage by upper-basin states has trimmed the amount of water California can get from the river by 800,000 a.f. a year, Maze noted. “That water is gone forever.”
Then, of course, there’s the severe drought that has hit Southern California and the Eastern Sierra which, if buckets of water and mountains of snow don’t appear, could have a serious impact on the region in 2008.
Maze said that he thought the Legislature would have to go back into session to act on the governor’s water package, which would eventually have to be approved by voters, too, since bonds would provide the $9 billion in funding for the numerous water-related projects in the proposal.
The governor’s other major policy initiative, reforming the state’s health care system to provide some sort of health care for all Californians, has been a political football all year, and the kicking, dropping and passing will likely continue.
When it comes to the various competing healthcare bills and proposals, “I see nothing happening until the end of the year,” said Maze, and it will likely join water on the Legislature’s to-do list.   “This thing is not close to being resolved” he said.
Inyo County has joined other counties across the state to monitor the various health care options, since almost all of them would require counties to pick up more of the cost of providing care to their residents.
Another state move that could cost the county money was Secretary of State Debra Bowen’s decision to “de-certify” electronic, touch-screen voting machines such as those used by the county. Maze said he and “many members (of the Legislature) see that move as outrageous and unreasonable.” He didn’t promise a legislative fix, however.
When it comes to the state’s effort to build more prisons and have counties maybe get into the prison-building business, Maze said there is no exception to the required 25 percent match for small counties seeking to land a prison. He reminded the supervisors that the decision to build a state prison would be up to the county.
“No one’s going to have their arms broken or legs twisted” to get them to become a partner with the state to build and run a new state prison, he said.
In reality, though, Maze predicted the plan for 53,000 new state prison beds would be accomplished by expanding existing prisons, not building new ones.
Maze was pretty blunt when it came to what he considered the overzealous protection of wildlife, whether that meant providing water to the Delta Smelt instead of millions of people, or creating hundreds of thousands of acres of “critical habitat,” much of it in Inyo County, for the Eastern Sierra bighorn sheep.
“We can’t have trees, rocks and critters valued higher than human life.”