Sen. Cogdill hails state water legislation

State Sen. Dave Cogdill praised a group of bills the Legislature approved in November designed, in part, to overhaul the state’s water delivery system.

“There’s very little of what we’d classify as pork in this,” Cogdill, R-Modesto, said  at Tuesday’s Tuolumne County Board of Supervisors meeting. “I still find myself surprised we got it done.”
  

He said the effort was truly bipartisan, considering all new funding measures in California require a two-thirds majority vote.

“There was a wide coalition of folks,” Cogdill said.

But the real challenge still lies ahead, according to Cogdill: Voters must approve an $11 billion bond measure that would fund the legislation’s proposed improvements.

The bond question will be brought to the voters on the November ballot.

Without voter approval, “we’re back to square one,” Cogdill said.

The water package included five bills. Among the stated aims and measures included in the package are:   
    •mandated 20 percent water use reductions in urban areas by 2020.
    • higher fines for illegal water diversion.
    • appointment of a board that would provide guidance on the Sacramento/San Joaquin River Delta, which provides much of the state’s drinking and irrigation water. The board could oversee the development of a controversial peripheral canal to transfer delta water.
    • new groundwater monitoring efforts
    • an $11 billion bond measure designed to fund the overhaul. This money would not be used to fund canal construction.

Cogdill defended the prospect of a peripheral canal in the Delta area, saying, “Conveyance has to be improved.”

He said concerns about the canal being used to simply siphon Northern California’s water to Southern California are unfounded.

“I believe water law is evolved to the point where that can’t happen,” he said.

He added that environmental groups — some of which, he said, supported the water package — wouldn’t let that happen.

Some groups say that a peripheral canal will degrade the delicate Delta ecosystem and simply allow more water to be taken to fuel development in Southern California.

John Buckley, of the Twain Harte-based Central Sierra Environmental Resource Center, is among those who are critical of the water package.

He called the legislation “an attempt to please every imaginable interest group,” and a way to avoid large-scale water conservation.

“Taxpayers will end up paying to send a lot more water from Northern California southward to big money water users,” Buckley said.

Cogdill, meanwhile, told supervisors that the state’s projected population growth to 50 million people in the immediate future and deterioration of its water delivery infrastructure necessitate a new water system.
 

“The future will be very dire with water if we don’t do what is necessary,” Cogdill said.

Board of Supervisors’ Chairwoman Teri Murrison had concerns about how the water legislation will affect local waterways. She worried that if a peripheral canal were built, more water could be required from the Tuolumne and Stanislaus rivers to keep the Delta healthy. Both rivers flow through the county en route to the Delta.

Cogdill acknowledged Murrison’s concerns, saying, “It’s about trying to find that balance.”   

Cogdill was ushered out of Tuesday’s meeting with applause and kind words from County Administrator Craig Pedro.

Cogdill recently announced he will not be seeking re-election in 2010.

“You have truly been a fantastic representative of this county,” Pedro said. “You put people and principles first, not politics.”

“It has been an amazing decade in my life and an honor for me to serve,” Cogdill said.