Editorial: Water: To get right answer, ask right questions

If anyone should be concerned about California's water situation, it's the leaders of the San Diego County Water Authority.

This agency, which provides water to 3 million people in the San Diego area, is 90 percent dependent on supplies from the Colorado River and the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. Both are in trouble. The Colorado is plagued by drought, and the Delta has become an increasingly unreliable plumbing valve for moving water south.

Over the long run, both the Colorado River Basin and the Sacramento-San Joaquin watershed are vulnerable to climate change. If you worry about sinkholes in La Jolla, imagine the maw that will swallow Southern California if both the Colorado and the Sierra are hit by simultaneous 25-year droughts.

Given their predicament, you'd think San Diego leaders would be heralding one or both proposals by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Senate President Pro Tem Don Perata to place water bond measures on the February ballot.

They are not. San Diego officials say that neither plan does much for their customers. The governor's $9 billion blueprint depends largely on reservoirs. Perata's $5.8 billion plan offers a broader vision, but doesn't facilitate a process for smarter conveyance of water through the Delta.

"Storage without a way to get the water is useless," says Jim Bond, the mayor of Encinitas and a member of the San Diego Water Authority.

He's right. And that's one reason state leaders need to take a breath, stop the dueling press conferences and drill down on the real challenges California faces in sustaining its water supplies.

A special Assembly hearing on Thursday provided a helpful reality check. Experts showed how various regions of the state face unique water problems -- ones that cannot be addressed by two or three large infrastructure projects.

"There's a need for a much bigger view ... a systematic view," said Jay Lund, an engineering professor from the University of California, Davis.

The hearing also revealed how water diversions -- facilitated by state and federal projects -- have greatly reduced the amount of fresh water flowing through the Delta, particularly in dry years.

This provided an essential counterpoint to Assembly Minority Leader Mike Villines, who says that California is crazy to allow large volumes of fresh water to flow through the Delta, "totally wasted." If California were to capture every last drop that flows into the Delta, it would doom this already damaged estuary, just as the Soviet Union destroyed the Aral Sea.

Are there answers to California's water woes? Yes, and they lie in increased urban water conservation, water recycling, improved pricing of farm water (to encourage efficiency), groundwater banking and short and long-term fixes to the Delta. The state's toolbox shouldn't exclude new reservoirs, but as Lund noted Thursday: "We have to be careful where we add surface storage to provide the greatest utility to the system."

In other words, state leaders must start with this question: "What problems are we trying to fix?" instead of, "What groups are we trying to satisfy?" The sooner they get their priorities straight, the sooner California will be prepared to handle the next drought -- and the next federal court decision.