The California Legislature and Governor announced a huge success after years of trying, a victory of compromise that promised an abundant and less expensive resource necessary to modern living. The bill addressed every stakeholder’s needs, every politician’s pet pork project (although few had a chance to read the actual bill before passage): handshakes all around, off to a brighter future! The year was 1996, and the energy deregulation scheme proved a disaster for every rate payer in the State. A convincing argument could even be made that our subsequent economic anemia and current faltering recovery have their roots in the pseudo-deregulation of the electricity markets.

The Legislature and Governor have just announced the passage of another scheme making similar promises: water will be available to California’s homes, businesses, and farms for the foreseeable future, a new water czar agency will lead us to water plenty, the San Joaquin-Sacramento Delta will be protected and loved (fish got to swim, birds got to fly, I got to . . . ), water waste will be ended. The big difference is no one is even pretending its all going to be less expensive: its going to cost all of us more, much more. The bill passed at 6 a.m. with many members never having read or reviewed the legislation, does this sound familiar?

A centerpiece of the bill is an $11.1 billion bond measure on the November 2010 ballot. The bond measure would throw money around the State for any number of water supply, environmental improvement, and groundwater cleanup projects. These projects are the result of careful consideration of the State’s water needs and the hard choices forced upon negotiators by the State’s fiscal crisis. TRANSLATION: These projects are the pork doled out to various Legislaturalists to buy a vote.

Senate Minority Leader Dennis Hollingsworth thinks the State’s voters will will buy this pig in a poke:

"It's clearly the most significant investment in our water supply and water quality that we've seen in 40 or 50 years," said Hollingsworth, R-Murrieta, who has opposed past borrowing proposals as wasteful. “It's been carefully crafted fiscally where a fiscal conservative like me can support it.”

California is in decline by almost any measure, and we must fix our water supply problems if we are to remain a Golden State. Keep in mind that huge parts of this legislation are a sop to irrational environmentalists by their hacks in the Legislature. Before you make up your mind regarding this legislation, be sure to read Distorted Water put out by Rep Devin Nunes (R-CD21). Its an indispensible explanation of many of the water myths. California needs solutions to our looming water problem, but if this is the best that the Legislature can produce, we need to rethink more that just our position on this single bill.