Dan Walters: Jerry Brown knows California water debate is tricky business

Jerry Brown spent months and much political capital three decades ago to persuade the Legislature to authorize construction of a "peripheral canal" that would complete the immense statewide water project that his father had begun.

Brown and state Sen. Ruben Ayala – who died this month – cajoled, twisted arms and bought (with local pork barrel projects, such as new office buildings) enough votes to finally win legislative approval. But then a strange-bedfellows alliance of big San Joaquin Valley farmers and environmental groups sponsored a referendum on the project and persuaded voters to block it in 1982, just before Brown ended his first gubernatorial stint.

That rejection paralyzed water policy for decades, as the state's population increased by 50 percent, but then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger jump-started it with a very complicated new policy apparatus, coupled with an $11.2 billion bond issue now scheduled for the November ballot.

Brown is back in the governorship and has elevated water – refining what Schwarzenegger wrought, especially the bond issue – to his second highest priority, just under balancing the state budget.

"The water bond is challenging," Brown said recently. "It's a big boulder to push down the road."

Indeed it is. And the greatest challenge for Brown and legislators would be to make some changes in the bond issue to enhance its chances of passage without reopening the entire water issue and, in effect, going back to square one.

Brown still wants the peripheral canal, or something like it, as the centerpiece, transporting Sacramento River water around (or under, via tunnel) the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta to the head of the California Aqueduct near Tracy. He and other advocates contend that it would be the best approach to water supply reliability and the Delta's water quality and habitat problems.

However, what's now called an "alternative conveyance" still has steadfast opposition, especially in and around the Delta and among environmental groups, and any reopening of the issue could give them a new avenue to block the project.

Brown must weigh that against the possibility, or even probability, that the water bond will be rejected unless it is slenderized and stripped of its pork that has little or nothing to do with improving water supplies or Delta improvement.

A big issue is whether, as written, the general obligation bonds repaid by all taxpayers should be used to construct new reservoirs, or whether the state should return to having water users pay for new facilities, as the original State Water Plan did. (The "alternative conveyance" would be financed by water users under any circumstance.)

Water is tricky business, as Brown knows from harsh experience.