Senate committee votes to delay water bond until 2014

by Dan Bacher

The California Senate Committee on Natural Resources and Wildlife voted 6 to 0 on July 2 to delay the controversial water bond until 2014.

A.B. 42 is authored by Assemblyman Henry Perea and coauthored by Assemblyman Conway and Senators Fuller and Rubio.

Senators Pavley, La Malfa, Cannella, Fuller Kehoe and Wolk voted to re-refer the Legislation to the Appropriations Commission. The vote followed a motion by Wolk to repeal the water bond.

No vote was recorded for Evans, Padilla and Simitian.

Delta advocates have blasted the pork-laden bond for funding questionable "habitat restoration" designed to greenwash the construction of Governor Jerry Brown's peripheral canal or tunnel, an environmentally destructive and enormously expensive projet to export more Delta water to southern California and corporate agribusiness.

According to a quote from coalition of water and business interests in the Senate Analysis, "Although voters do agree that investments in water infrastructure and environmental restoration enhancements are needed, 2012 is not the year to pass a water bond. This is in part because of the current state of the economy. The key is to pass a simple bill to delay the bond to 2014."

Barbara Barrigan-Parrilla, executive director of Restore the Delta, responded, "The water bond is a tool to move forward with the Delta Reform Act of 2009. If the water package was doing what it was supposed to do, the voters would be happy to vote for the bond. But the bond can't move forward because it is filled with pork and won't solve California's water problems."

"The bond has a significant amount of money - over $3 million - set aside for "restoration" of the Delta. Yet the DFG Director has admitted that he doesn't under the link behind the proposed Delta "habitat restoration" and the restoration of fish populations," said Barrigan-Parrilla.

The water bond, by including funds for questionable Delta "restoration," will help clear the path for the construction of a peripheral canal or tunnel under the Bay Delta Conservation Plan. Delta advocates point out that you can't "save" or "restore" the Delta by draining it.