Schwarzenegger spoke at the San Luis Reservoir near Los Banos, the hub of those federal and state projects. The sun-baked reservoir stores water pumped from the delta for delivery to hundreds of thousands of acres of cropland and 25 million people.
The reservoir now holds only a third of its average storage for July, because of a dry winter and the nine-day shutdown of the delta pumps in May to protect endangered fish.
As Schwarzenegger spoke, Perata released his plan for a $5-billion bond measure that would give money to regions in the state to solve their own problems. He criticized the governor's proposal as a "top-down solution to a bottom-up problem."
Unlike Schwarzenegger's bond plan, Perata's proposal would not dictate new dams, instead allowing regions to determine the best way to boost supplies. He said his plan would deliver cheaper, quicker fixes "rather than reliving the water wars of the past over false choices like dams and canals."
Schwarzenegger's proposal would invest $2.5 billion of taxpayer money in two reservoirs and require those who use the additional water to pay an additional $2 billion.
Schwarzenegger has called for construction of a dam and reservoir 77 miles northwest of Sacramento, and a dam above Millerton Lake on the San Joaquin River north of Fresno. For two years, Republican lawmakers have unsuccessfully pursued bonds to pay for those dams.
Barry Nelson, a senior policy analyst with the Natural Resources Defense Council, said farmers could never afford to pay for the dams, and urban water agencies, which have a much greater ability to raise revenue, have cheaper ways to stretch supplies.
"Nobody is interested in paying for these facilities, and it strikes us as really inappropriate to ask the taxpayers to pay for facilities that have not proven themselves," Nelson said.
Randy McFarland, spokesman for the Friant Water Authority, which represents 15,000 farmers, said another dam on the San Joaquin River could catch Sierra Nevada runoff with no harm to the river downstream, improve water quality and provide flood protection.
But the group hasn't examined sharing the cost of building the dam, he said.
The Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, which serves 18 million people from Ventura County to San Diego, hasn't studied either dam project in detail, Assistant General Manager Roger Patterson said.
