They created CalFed to make peace among farmers, environmentalists and city water districts. Its aim is to restore the endangered salmon runs and native fish of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta and also to make it a more reliable source of water for Southern California.
CalFed has charted its 30-year course and spent $1.5 billion in state money in the last three years. But its mantra--"We all get better together"--has rung hollow lately with agribusiness, which uses roughly 80% of California's water and seeks a bigger, faster investment in new reservoirs.
Many water industry officials say that if voters reject Proposition 50, CalFed's funding will dry up. They warn that the state will plunge back into the combative days of the early 1990s, when interest groups clashed repeatedly over the shipment of Northern California water to the South Coast and San Joaquin Valley.
"We go back to the days of gridlock," said CalFed Executive Director Patrick Wright, "where we potentially have a fight every year over water project operations."
Without another infusion of cash from Proposition 50 or the federal government--and a big appropriation this year from Congress is a long shot--restoration of rivers would also halt, Wright said.
In the last several years, the decline of chinook salmon, delta smelt and splittail has reversed, and CalFed has breached small dams and screened pumps in several streams.
"To keep the program going," Wright said, "we will need a significant new infusion of funds either from a new bond or from new federal funding."
In the last six years, only public schools have won more bond money from California voters than water projects.
In November 1996, voters passed Proposition 204, a $995-million water bond issue. Three-quarters of that money had been spent as of July.
In March 2000, voters passed Proposition 13, the $2.1-billion Safe Drinking Water, Clean Water, Watershed Protection and Flood Protection Bond Act. Of that, $751 million remains.
Bubbling Streams
And just last March, voters approved a $2.6-billion bond measure, Proposition 40. Television ads for the bond issue showed images of bubbling Sierra streams, but most of the money is dedicated to urban and state parks and the purchase of wildlife habitat.
