Supporters of a proposed ballot initiative to kill California’s high-speed rail project and use the money to build new reservoirs are racing to gather enough signatures to qualify the measure for the November ballot.
But the campaign, which is being bankrolled by San Joaquin Valley farmers, is already drawing fire from fellow farmers and environmentalists, who call it a “Trojan horse.”
Backers say the proposal is a common-sense idea, given the state’s drought and growing water needs for farms and cities. They say it will cut through red tape and finally halt the highly controversial bullet train project to focus on higher-priority, long-stalled water projects. Those include Sites Reservoir in Colusa County, Temperance Flat Reservoir on the San Joaquin River near Sequoia-Kings National Park and raising the height of Shasta Dam near Redding and San Luis Dam near Los Banos.
“This is about getting our priorities straight,” said Aubrey Bettencourt, executive director of the California Water Alliance, a group of mostly San Joaquin Valley farmers backing the measure. “People have softened on high-speed rail because they have found out it is not what they were sold.
“It’s turned out to be a boondoggle. It’s constantly changing routes. It’s over budget. It’s not meeting its deadlines.”
On Thursday, opponents of the initiative, including Sacramento Valley rice farmers, held a news conference to blast the proposed initiative. They singled out for criticism a section that would amend the state constitution to give domestic water use the highest priority and agricultural irrigation the second-highest priority, above environmental needs such as restoring fish and wildlife populations.
“Most Californians would be shocked to discover this initiative is essentially a license to drain streams and rivers and impact fish and wildlife in California,” said Jay Ziegler, director of external affairs and policy for the Nature Conservancy. “The reality is that whatever your view on high-speed rail, this initiative is a disaster on any level.”
A poll in January by Stanford University’s Hoover Institution found that 53 percent of Californians support killing the high-speed rail project and using the unspent money on water projects, while 31 percent do not.
The “yes” campaign so far has raised $1.2 million, Bettencourt said. Backers must collect 585,407 valid signatures from registered California voters by April 26 to qualify for the November ballot. So far, they have 25 percent of that total, she said. But because the campaign has enough money to pay signature gathers, she expects it to qualify.
In November 2008, California voters approved a $9.95 billion bond measure to fund high-speed rail. The project’s cost, originally estimated at $33 billion, has ballooned to $64 billion, and delays and lawsuits from farmers and environmental groups have slowed progress, putting it two years behind schedule.
Last month, the Brown administration announced it would build the first section from the Bakersfield area to downtown San Jose, rather than beginning in Southern California. The decision was due largely to the costs of tunneling through the Tehachapi and San Gabriel mountains.
The project broke ground in the Fresno area last year, but so far no track has been laid.
The proposed ballot measure would shift the remaining $8 billion in high-speed rail bond money to a newly created agency, the State Water Storage and Groundwater Storage Facilities Authority. It also would shift $2.7 billion that voters approved in November 2014 as part of a $7.5 billion water bond to the new authority — which would be made up of nine members appointed by water agencies and local governments.
Bettencourt said the problem with the 2014 water bond is that although it earmarked $2.7 billion for storage, that doesn’t guarantee reservoirs will be built because it could be used to fund groundwater storage projects. The proposed initiative would fast-track the four large reservoir projects, providing 50 percent of their costs, which could be matched with local and federal funds, she said.
Critics say the proposed process is confusing and would set back efforts to spend the water bond money, which the California Water Commission plans to do next year after finishing cost-benefit studies.
“The results will be that these projects will be delayed, and we can’t afford to have that happen,” said Assemblyman Jim Gallagher, R-Plumas Lake.
Rice farmers in the Sacramento Valley, many of whom have senior water rights dating back to the 1800s, said the initiative could make it difficult for them to flood rice fields every winter. In places such as Sutter, Glenn and Butte counties, farmers harvest rice each September and then divert billions of gallons of water into their fields from the Sacramento, Yuba and Feather rivers to create artificial wetlands.
The wetlands provide food to millions of ducks, geese and other birds migrating along the Pacific Flyway. They also help decompose rice straw, the leftover plant matter from the rice harvests that in decades past was burned in huge plumes of black smoke until air regulations strictly limited the practice.
If farmers can’t flood their fields, as they did with 200,000 acres this winter, they have to bale the rice straw and try to sell it as cattle feed, or plow it multiple times to chop it up. Both methods are costly, said Tim Johnson, president of the California Rice Industry Association.
“There is a question about whether flooding our fields is an agricultural water use and it comes in second — or is it an environmental use that comes in dead last?” he said. “Nobody knows.”
Gov. Jerry Brown, a fervent bullet train supporter, has not taken a position on the ballot proposal, whose funders include large agricultural operations such as Harris Farms in Coalinga, Robert Brazil Farms in Hanford and Hansen Ranches in Corcoran. But last April, at a news conference in the Sierra Nevada to announce new statewide water conservation rules, Brown was asked why the state was building a bullet train when it needs reservoirs?
His reply: “The same reason why we’re building schools, repairing roads, houses, sheltering people and hospitals. Government is not just one thing. It’s many things, and we can’t stop the world and get off.”
Online extra
Go to https://cawater4all.com for information on the yes campaign and www.stopthewatergrab.com for information on the no campaign.
