SAN FRANCISCO - As California lawmakers returned from summer recess this week to resume efforts to craft a new water bond measure, Gov. Jerry Brown urged them to pass his much smaller proposal.
Brown, who is running for re-election this year,
"My $6 billion plan provides for water use efficiency and recycling, effective groundwater management and added storage," Brown said on his campaign website. "It invests in safe drinking water, particularly in disadvantaged communities and for watershed restoration and increased flows in some of our most important rivers and streams."
Voters are currently set to decide on $11 billion bond proposal in November.
That bond measure has been criticized for being "pork-laden" and too expensive.
State lawmakers have been trying to put together a replacement measure, but their proposals have tended to increase in size as they try to get more legislators to buy in to the plan.
Smaller is better, the governor said, saying the $11 billion measure would cost taxpayers $750 million a year for 30 years, "at the expense of funding for schools, health care and public safety. "This is on top of the nearly $8 billion a year the state already spends on bond debt service," he said.
Specifically, Brown's bond would allocate $2 billion for water storage projects and $1.175 billion for watershed protection and ecosystem restoration projects. Around $750 million would go toward regional water reliability, which includes integrated regional water management, stormwater capture, and water conservation.
Another $400 million would go toward safe drinking water programs, $450 million toward water recycling, and $450 million toward groundwater sustainability.
The remaining $475 million would go toward Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta projects and $300 million would be for statewide flood management.
Lois Wolk, D-Davis, who has proposed a $7.5 billion water bond measure, said it's good to see the governor engage in this discussion and good that he agrees the current $11 billion bond is "a nonstarter."
"I'm encouraged to see that the governor's proposal is not that different from the Senate's SB 848, and that he agrees that a successful water bond must focus on the most critical projects statewide and be neutral on the Delta tunnels," Wolk said in a statement.
However, she said one area that requires further attention is groundwater.
"The governor's outline is critically low on groundwater treatment, a statewide priority where needs are upwards of $1 billion dollars," she said. "I look forward to closing the gap between our proposals in the next few days."
The legislature has less than a month to come up with a new water bond measure. It has already missed the statutory deadline of June 26 to get a bond on the November ballot, but the Legislature can change the statues to get around that deadline.
However, there are two deadlines for printing ballots for the statewide election in November — Aug. 11 and Aug. 20 — that lawmakers will aim to meet.
The final recess for the state legislature this year is Aug. 31.
