Water Legislation

This is an example of what we get with our legislative tax dollars.

On Thursday the California Legislature passed a number of bills related to water, including Senate Bill 1640, introduced by Senator Sheila Kuehl, D-Los Angeles. The bill passed the Assembly with a 46-32 vote just before the clock ran out on August 31.

SB 1640 is an updated version of the controversial SB 820 that was introduced last year in the 2005 legislative session. SB 820 passed both houses, but was ultimately vetoed by the Governor over issues concerning groundwater reporting.

A major part of the bill is a requirement that all agricultural water suppliers complete a comprehensive water management plan and submit it to the State. While this seems like a reasonable requirement, the legislature ignored the fact that agricultural water districts have already been doing this on a voluntary basis since 1999. Why then is there a need to force the issue when a voluntary program seems to be working just fine?

In fact, the Agricultural Water Management Council water management planning process (which oversees agricultural water management planning) was the ONLY part of the CalFed Water Use Efficiency Program to meet its targets on-time over the past seven years.