Two for California

Legislative success often depends on spotting an opportunity and seizing it. That was the case in Sacramento this week with two major bills: a big water transfer from Imperial Valley farms to the San Diego urban area and purchase of the Headwaters stand of old-growth redwood trees in far Northern California.

Both were controversial issues and both had big price tags--$242 million for the Headwaters grove and $235 million to effect the farm-to-city water shift. If the Legislature and Gov. Pete Wilson had failed to act this year, the chance of achieving either--particularly saving the spectacular trees--might have been lost forever. Fortunately, the state had the money available in the $4.4-billion state budget surplus. The other element that brought success on the issues was the determination of the governor and key legislators.

The $235-million subsidy for the water transfer originally was included in a proposed $1.6-billion water and flood control bond issue, one of the most vigorously negotiated compromises of the legislative session. But the bond issue collapsed at the last moment when Wilson and farm groups insisted that a $57-million item for reservoir planning be upped to $157 million.

Wilson blamed the failure on “radical no-growth” elements working through Senate President Pro Tem John Burton (D-San Francisco). But participants in the delicate negotiations insisted that was not so. The deal was broken by the premature demand for more reservoir money, a move that threatened to undercut a joint state-federal project to develop ways to remedy environmental destruction to the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta caused by water exports to Southern California and the San Joaquin Valley.

With the bond dead, Assemblyman Bob Hertzberg (D-Sherman Oaks) and Sen. Steve Peace (D-San Diego) quickly moved the $235 million into a bill to appropriate the money directly from the state’s general fund. They maneuvered it to passage in tandem with the Headwaters bill, which passed during the final moments of the session. For the state to underwrite a contract involving three giant and wealthy water districts is unorthodox. But the importance of the transfer to future Southern California water supplies was too great to let the chance slip by.

Purchase of Headwaters from Pacific Lumber Co. first was negotiated by the company, federal officials, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and Wilson. But the deal was challenged for the lack of strict controls on logging stands adjacent to the tall trees. Of special concern was the impact on streams used by the endangered Coho salmon to spawn.

Sen. Bryon Sher (D-Stanford) insisted on tougher restrictions, which were critical to the bill’s success. The payoff to Pacific was sweetened with additional funds for neighboring stands of redwoods. Pacific comes away with nearly $500 million in state and federal funds and the environmentalists still complain that the logging controls are not tough enough.

But without these elements, forged in intense negotiations, the opportunity to buy the ancient redwoods would have been lost. Wilson, Sher and others insisted on an arrangement that would best achieve everyone’s ultimate goal: to put the trees into inviolate public protection.

It’s said that the legislative process is like making sausage--you’d rather not see it done. In these cases, working out the details was messy at times, but the outcomes were double victories for California.