Water Rights

With surprisingly little opposition, lawmakers Thursday authorized a statewide vote in November on a $995-million water bond measure, and Gov. Pete Wilson quickly signed it into law, calling it "truly historic legislation." The bulk of the water bond money--$600 million--would be used to restore the environment in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta.

Lawmakers were expected to vote today on whether to place a $995-million water bond on the November ballot, while negotiations over a prison construction bond have been delayed until August, when the Legislature returns from its summer break. The water bond offers money for environmental restoration projects from the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta to Lake Tahoe, as well as for urban streams, perhaps including the Los Angeles River.

Lawmakers were expected to vote today on whether to place a $995-million water bond on the November ballot, while negotiations over a prison construction bond have been delayed until August, when the Legislature returns from its summer break. The bond offers money for environmental restoration projects from the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta to Lake Tahoe, as well as for urban streams, perhaps including the Los Angeles River.

Deputy Secretary of the Interior John Garamendi urged Gov. Pete Wilson on Thursday to exert pressure on Southern California water agencies to settle a dispute over potential new supplies of Colorado River water. At stake, Garamendi said, is the ability to augment Southern California supplies by 600,000 to 800,000 acre-feet of water, about equal to the historical annual use by the city of Los Angeles.

This environmentally sensitive city must rank as California's per capita leader in "Save Mono Lake" bumper stickers. Its fabled streets and bridges fairly teem with motorists advertising their concern for the Eastern Sierra lake that Los Angeles once had all but sucked dry. And it's a fine thing. Mono Lake needed saving. Of course, up here "Save Mono Lake" can be seen as coded language, suggesting a hostile subtext.

They are California's suburban future and their names ring with the boldness of flush times ahead: Pacificana, Celebrity City, Liberty New Town, Diablo Grande, New Jerusalem. Up and down the state--from cotton fields outside Bakersfield to pastures near Red Bluff to coastal sage land in Chula Vista--more than 110 "new towns" and large subdivisions are on the drawing board. They envision 2 million residents, 30,000 acres for commercial, industrial and office use, and at least 44 golf courses.

This is being written on Tuesday morning, amid what appears to be the final furies of a huge, two-day storm. Much of Northern California is hip-deep in some form or another of elemental chaos. Steady rain has turned highways into running creeks and running creeks into full-blown rivers. Winds blowing as hard as 70 mph have set high-rises and bridges to swaying. Out by the sea, a sinkhole has swallowed a mansion. Entire towns are blacked out, school districts closed. For all of this, I apologize.

As a poet of the Imperial Valley, Rick Mealey writes triumphantly of the farmers who transformed this stubborn desert into one of the world's great agricultural regions with the strenuous application of grit and perseverance and enormous amounts of water from the Colorado River. But the 59-year-old former farmer and dairy rancher is worried that one of his more popular and apocalyptic poems written a decade ago is proving prophetic. Titled "Imperial Valley 1998.

As feared by some member cities of the Metropolitan Water District, a panel of the district's board of directors did little at a Monday meeting to alter a proposed plan that critics contend would penalize older, poorer communities with revamped water allocations and severe fees if the communities used more water than allotted. The full board is expected to consider the plan Feb. 12. "We have some concerns about the impact this plan will ultimately have on our ratepayers," said Ryan Alsop, spokesman for the Long Beach Water Department.

C. Barton Crattie, a Georgia land surveyor, did not expect to start a border war when he penned a newspaper article about a flawed 1818 survey that placed his state a mile below the Tennessee River. The mistake in calculating Georgia's northern corner, he figured, was just an odd historical footnote, an interesting digression for those who fret that the drought-stricken state will soon run out of water. "Unfortunately for . . .