At an education event today in Sacramento, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger fielded a question about his administration's possible plan to move toward building a peripheral canal.
Asked by a reporter whether his administration is considering signing an executive order, Schwarzenegger said:
Well, I'm very proud to say that we have for the last 18 months all worked together very hard, all the stakeholders, Democrats and Republicans, to come up with a solution and to improve our infrastructure and water.
Because right now we cannot guarantee the people of California water in the future. If it is 10, 15 years from now, we cannot guarantee that. We have seen already one year of drought, and as you know most of our reservoirs are down by 50 to 75 percent. So we are really in a crisis situation.
We have seen water prices go up. We have seen that permits for businesses and building have been denied because of a lack of water and so on. So it's hurting our economy and it's hurting folks out there in California and we want to fix that.
This is why we recommend to redo that infrastructure and to build the new infrastructure and water. To build more above the ground, below the ground water storage. To fix the Delta once and for all. And to build a new delivery system.
We are in the middle of negotiating right now. We were very happy that Senator Feinstein came out last week and helped us with the negotiations and kind of inspired everyone again to go in there. So we are all going to work together. I am not off doing anything, I am right now working with everybody and bringing everyone together to make sure that we rebuild our water system so that we can guarantee people not only 20 years from now but 30, 40, 50 years from now, water.
So when they turn on the faucet, there's water coming out. When the farmers turn on, want to irrigate their land, there's water coming out. That's what I want to guarantee.
Reporter: Can we expect an executive order from your office in the next week or so?
Right now I have no plans, but I will let you know. As you know, we are like an open book. Everything that is developing in our office, you will always know about it.
The transcript comes from Kevin Yamamura, who attended the event.
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