Coastal Calitics and Central Valley Water

by: wes

Thu Dec 10, 2009 at 10:00:15 AM PST

Let me call attention to the 20th Congressional District, where Jim Costa campaigns like a Democrat, but too often votes like a Republican, especially when the issues are ecological: water, fresh air, extractive industries, etc.

Last night, I was reading the most recent issue of High Country News.  One article was about the proposal to re-establish Tulare Lake as a cost effective alternative to building some of the dams called for in the Schwarzenegger Water Project passed by the legislature in the recent special session.  Surprisingly, this story, from a Colorado based publication, mentioned that Steve Haze was going to enter the primary against Costa, and never a peep out of Calitics before this.

After reading the story, it seems to me that Haze has it right.

"We've lost more jobs in construction than we have in farming this year," he says, piloting his granite blue Chevy pickup through clouds of fluffy bolls. "The real question is: How do we manage the water we have for farms, fish and people?"

But it's the feasibility study Haze completed last year that both the California Democratic Council and the California State Grange, a 137-year-old farmers' advocacy group, quoted when they endorsed the plan. In that study, Haze's team of engineers, hydrologists and economists argue that returning water to Tulare Lake would cost $1.3 billion -- a fifth as much as a proposed dam that would capture flows from the Upper San Joaquin River at Temperance Flat. It would also store twice as much water.