Leadership Lacking on CALFED, Officials Tell Little Hoover Commission

On Thursday, August 25, the Little Hoover Commission kicked off the first of three hearings evaluating the governance structure of the CALFED Program and the California Bay-Delta Authority. The hearing at the State Capitol also featured testimony from other officials involved in the formation of CALFED as well as current state and federal agency leaders.

Former Governor Pete Wilson and former U.S. Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt minced few words in their assessment that while the program has achieved some results, it has failed to deliver in several major areas due to a lack of consistent leadership at the highest levels.

“At the outset, we clearly anticipated this process would yield major progress in two areas: finding and developing the sites and infrastructure for increasing surface storage, and making large investments in modernizing and updating the Delta infrastructure,” Babbitt said. “The program has not met those expectations.”

In another bombshell comment, Babbitt said that because of climate change and resulting sea level rise, the Delta will experience salinity intrusion.  He called for the construction of a peripheral canal to deal with that and increased surface storage.

Sounding themes similar to those raised by ACWA in its recent action plan, “No Time to Waste: A Blueprint for California Water,” Babbitt said potential impacts of climate change and other factors underscore the need to take action now on storage and Delta improvements.

“We have got to put these issues on the table now,” he said. “It’s extremely important to strip away all the past battles and get a fresh look at this.”

Wilson, who as governor teamed with Babbitt to forge agreements that led to the CALFED Program, said tremendous progress was made in bringing disparate agencies and stakeholders together. Unfortunately, time ran out on his watch before agreements could be reached regarding storage, he said, and today there seems to be little leadership to make it happen.

“It appears that process has replaced leadership. These are contentious issues – policy and political issues that can only be made with leadership,” Wilson said. “We need leadership to make decisions now to prevent these challenges from growing into crises.”

Former Resources Secretary Mary Nichols said that she believed it is important to emphasize the successes of CALFED, while acknowledging that the, "Authority is an odd creature that only a mother could love."

She also testified that she believes "dismantling" the CALFED program would be a terrible mistake and would quickly return us to the old days of protracted legal battles.

Bennett Raley, former assistant secretary for water and science said "CALFED's financial overreaching has been a key downfall.  He said it is unrealistic to plan to spend $8 billion over a decade without lining up the funding.

Current Chair for the Authority Gary Hunt told commissioners that the Authority functions well and that sweeping reorganization is not the direction to go.

"Saying CALFED is a failure -- that's pure hyperbole," Department of Water

Resources Director Lester Snow said. "CALFED was not designed to resolve all of the state's water problems; that is not its charge. It was designed to solve conflicts in the Bay-Delta system and it is doing that."

He noted that because some elements of the program have not progressed as quickly as others, some stakeholders perceive that the program no longer works. Snow pointed to surface storage investigations and Delta improvements as key examples.

A second hearing is set for September 22 to hear from stakeholders. ACWA Executive Director Steve Hall will be providing testimony at that hearing.

The commission is expected to issue recommendations in November.