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<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:7.5pt'><span style='font-size:22.0pt;
font-family:"Georgia","serif";color:black'>California Tries to Solve Water Woes
<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<form name=cccform>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:"Georgia","serif"'><o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:9.5pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";
color:gray'>By <a
href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/s/jennifer_steinhauer/index.html?inline=nyt-per"
title="More Articles by Jennifer Steinhauer">JENNIFER STEINHAUER</a><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:9.5pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";
color:gray'>Published: October 12, 2009 <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style='line-height:18.0pt'><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Georgia","serif"'>LOS
ANGELES — In a sign that a deal addressing California’s
longstanding water supply problems may be near, Gov. <a
href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/s/arnold_schwarzenegger/index.html?inline=nyt-per"
title="More articles about Arnold Schwarzenegger."><span style='color:#004276'>Arnold
Schwarzenegger</span></a> convened a special session of the Legislature on
Monday to revisit a package of water bills.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='line-height:18.0pt'><span style='font-size:14.0pt;
font-family:"Georgia","serif"'><a
href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/13/us/13calif.html?_r=1&adxnnl=1&ref=todayspaper&adxnnlx=1255468733-oxjpgNIRlH+94RVanynKrA#secondParagraph"><span
style='color:#004276;display:none;text-decoration:none'>Skip to next paragraph</span></a>
<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal align=right style='text-align:right;line-height:18.0pt'><span
style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Georgia","serif"'><a
href="javascript:pop_me_up2('http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2009/10/13/us/13calif.ready.html',%20'13calif_ready',%20'width=720,height=600,scrollbars=yes,toolbars=no,resizable=yes')"><span
style='font-size:10.5pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";color:#004276;
text-decoration:none'>Enlarge This Image</span></a><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='line-height:18.0pt'><a
href="javascript:pop_me_up2('http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2009/10/13/us/13calif.ready.html',%20'13calif_ready',%20'width=720,height=600,scrollbars=yes,toolbars=no,resizable=yes')"><span
style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Georgia","serif";color:#004276;text-decoration:
none'><img border=0 width=190 height=127 id="Picture_x0020_3"
src="cid:image001.jpg@01CA4C10.55755120"
alt="http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2009/10/13/us/13calif_190.jpg"></span></a><span
style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Georgia","serif"'><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal align=right style='text-align:right;line-height:8.25pt'><span
style='font-size:7.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";color:#909090'>David
McNew/Getty Images<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=caption2><span style='font-size:10.0pt'>Dry fields near Buttonwillow
are signs of the water problems a special legislative session is intended to
address in California. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal align=right style='text-align:right;line-height:18.0pt'><span
style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Georgia","serif"'><a
href="javascript:pop_me_up2('http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2009/10/12/us/13calif1.ready.html',%20'13calif1_ready',%20'width=720,height=600,scrollbars=yes,toolbars=no,resizable=yes')"><span
style='font-size:10.5pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";color:#004276;
text-decoration:none'>Enlarge This Image</span></a><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='line-height:18.0pt'><a
href="javascript:pop_me_up2('http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2009/10/12/us/13calif1.ready.html',%20'13calif1_ready',%20'width=720,height=600,scrollbars=yes,toolbars=no,resizable=yes')"><span
style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Georgia","serif";color:#004276;text-decoration:
none'><img border=0 width=190 height=125 id="Picture_x0020_4"
src="cid:image002.jpg@01CA4C10.55755120"
alt="http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2009/10/12/us/13calif1_190.jpg"></span></a><span
style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Georgia","serif"'><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal align=right style='text-align:right;line-height:8.25pt'><span
style='font-size:7.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";color:#909090'>David
McNew/Getty Images<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=caption2><span style='font-size:10.0pt'>Aging pipes in the
Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style='line-height:18.0pt'><a name=secondParagraph></a><span
style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Georgia","serif"'>A three-year drought,
federal environmental regulations restricting water flows and the fixation of
Mr. Schwarzenegger — who has said he is determined to leave a mark on one
of the state’s most intractable problems before leaving office next year
— have heightened the urgency for an agreement. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style='line-height:18.0pt'><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Georgia","serif"'>Mr.
Schwarzenegger, a Republican, had threatened to veto some 700 bills if
lawmakers did not reach a water deal by Sunday, the end of the regular
legislative session. But he backed off that threat on Monday, citing progress
as lawmakers and members of his staff hunkered down to work on the issue. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style='line-height:18.0pt'><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Georgia","serif"'>The
special session is expected to last until the end of the week, and both
Republicans and Democrats expressed optimism on Monday that a deal was in the
offing.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style='line-height:18.0pt'><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Georgia","serif"'>“While
we still need to hammer out remaining issues,” Darrell Steinberg, a
Democrat and Senate president pro tem, said in a statement, “we are on
the verge of the most comprehensive advance on water in California in decades.
We’ve made significant breakthroughs on many of the sticking points that
have plagued past attempts to stabilize the state’s water supply.”<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style='line-height:18.0pt'><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Georgia","serif"'>The
negotiations are focused on repairing the state’s fragile water
ecosystem, unleashing new water supplies and increasing water conservation
throughout the state. More specifically, negotiators hope to seal a deal that
would make equal the goals of restoring the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta
— a collection of channels, natural habitats and islands at the
confluence of the Sacramento and San Joaquin Rivers that is a major source of
the state’s drinking water — and increasing the supply of water to
residents, businesses and farms.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style='line-height:18.0pt'><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Georgia","serif"'>State
officials say the restoration of the delta, as envisioned in the negotiations,
would be the largest environmental restoration project in the United States,
surpassing the effort under way in the Florida Everglades.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style='line-height:18.0pt'><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Georgia","serif"'>But
the battle over how to distribute California’s water is generations old
— it was <a
href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/c/samuel_langhorne_clemens/index.html?inline=nyt-per"
title="More articles about Samuel Langhorne Clemens."><span style='color:#004276'>Mark
Twain</span></a> who was believed to have said, “Whiskey is for drinking;
water is for fighting over” — and when it comes to water
legislation, close to done never means done. In the delta alone, myriad efforts
have sought to change how water flows and to whom, including a package of five
policy and bond bills that never made it to a vote in the Democratic-controlled
Legislature this year.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style='line-height:18.0pt'><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Georgia","serif"'>Yet
many factors have made the need to fix California’s water system problems
all the more pressing.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style='line-height:18.0pt'><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Georgia","serif"'>The
drought has led to water restrictions and increased prices for water around the
state. And along with the drought, a federal order last year forcing water
authorities to curtail the use of large pumps in the Sacramento-San Joaquin
Delta to help preserve dying smelt has reduced water flows to agriculture and
resulted in dust-bowl-like conditions for many of the state’s farms. In
2008, over 100,000 acres of the 4.7 million acres in the Central Valley were
left unplanted, and experts expect that number to grow this year. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style='line-height:18.0pt'><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Georgia","serif"'>In
addition, environmental problems in the Sacramento River have resulted in a
collapse of the Chinook salmon population, closing salmon season off the coast
of California and much of Oregon for two years in a row.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style='line-height:18.0pt'><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Georgia","serif"'>Among
the bills in the making is one that would issue roughly $9 billion in bonds,
including $3 billion to build at least one dam. Some of the money would also be
used to help restore the delta ecosystem and fortify levies to withstand
natural disasters like floods and earthquakes. The bonds would require voter
approval.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style='line-height:18.0pt'><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Georgia","serif"'>What
remains to be worked out, negotiators say, is whether any money would be set
aside to build a peripheral canal that would transport water from the
Sacramento River around the delta to federal and state aqueducts for use in
urban and agricultural areas in the southern part of the state. The canal, long
a contentious issue among California water managers and politicians, is favored
by Mr. Schwarzenegger and Senator <a
href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/f/dianne_feinstein/index.html?inline=nyt-per"
title="More articles about Dianne Feinstein."><span style='color:#004276'>Dianne
Feinstein</span></a>, a Democrat.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style='line-height:18.0pt'><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Georgia","serif"'>Another
disputed piece of the negotiations involves the monitoring of groundwater
levels. Without monitoring groundwater usage, it is impossible to tell whether
aquifers are being stressed, which can lead to weakened <a
href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/science/topics/dams_and_dikes/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier"
title="Recent and archival news about levees and dams."><span style='color:
#004276'>levees</span></a> and damage to the surrounding environment. As the
drought has persisted, tapping into groundwater supplies has increased,
especially among farmers — and in some areas, state officials say,
dangerously so. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style='line-height:18.0pt'><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Georgia","serif"'>While
roughly 70 percent of the state’s water districts voluntarily measure
groundwater levels, reporting the levels is not mandatory, and Democrats had
sought to make it so. Republican lawmakers staunchly opposed state government
“trespassing” on private property to do so. A compromise would make
a water district’s failure to voluntarily report levels result in the
loss of billions of dollars from state bonds. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><i><span style='font-size:12.0pt;color:gray'>Byron
Leydecker, JcT</span></i><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><i><span style='font-size:12.0pt;color:gray'>Chair, Friends
of Trinity River</span></i><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><i><span style='font-size:12.0pt;color:gray'>PO Box 2327</span></i><span
style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><i><span style='font-size:12.0pt;color:gray'>Mill Valley, CA
94942-2327</span></i><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><i><span style='font-size:12.0pt;color:gray'>415 383 4810
land</span></i><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><i><span style='font-size:12.0pt;color:gray'>415 519 4810
cell</span></i><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><i><span style='font-size:12.0pt;color:gray'><a
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</span></i></b><i><span style='font-size:12.0pt;color:gray'>(secondary)</span></i><b><span
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