Global Courant
SACRAMENTO —
To paraphrase Clint Eastwood’s Dirty Harry in the 1973 movie classic “Magnum Force,” a governor must learn his limitations.
There are limits to power, even of a governor with no major political opposition and a very friendly, usually cooperative legislature.
This time Governor Gavin Newsom may have found his limits. Key legislators are pushing against his late-entry legislation to expedite construction of a highly controversial water tunnel under the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta.
As is his patron, Newsom tries to jam through the legislation at the last minute, denying lawmakers and the public enough time to review and discuss the proposal. That really ticks off legislators, whether they’re leaders or backbenchers.
“It feels disrespectful to the (legislative) process,” Sen. Susan Talamantes Eggman (D-Stockton) said during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on the governor’s proposal this month.
“It is so inappropriate to push through such a controversial issue at the last minute,” said Councilman Carlos Villapudua (D-Stockton).
Newsom did so last year and later bragged about his success in thwarting lawmakers. Towards the end of his two-year term, the governor sent the legislature an ambitious package of climate-fighting proposals, most of which were passed.
A governor can “hunt” legislators by holding their bills hostage. He could refuse to sign a bill drafted by a legislator who votes against his proposal. By waiting so long to send his bills to the legislature, a governor also significantly reduces the time opponents have to organize opposition.
This year, Newsom waited until May 19 to propose sketchy infrastructure legislation that he asked lawmakers to approve within five weeks as part of the state’s annual budget. What he proposed has nothing to do with the budget. But he can hold legislators’ favorite budget items hostage by their votes in favor of his proposal
Also, the governor’s legislation can be dumped into budget bills that don’t need to be reviewed by policy committees.
Newsom proposed a massive package of 11 bills that would make it easier to build clean energy, transportation and water projects, including the Delta Tunnel.
It would essentially do this by cutting back on environmental protection. Lawsuits filed under the California Environmental Quality Act of 1970 should be completed within 270 days unless a judge rules that this is infeasible. Now such lawsuits can drag on for years.
As for the tunnel, the vote needed for approval by a major delta oversight committee would be reduced. Protections for endangered wintering sandhill cranes would be relaxed. And the role of local interests in the design of the tunnel would become smaller, they fear.
For six decades, governors have tried to somehow build this project, but they have been beaten back by grassroots activists or state voters.
The delta is California’s most important water hub, serving 27 million people and irrigating 3 million acres.
“It’s the backbone of our state water system,” said Wade Crowfoot, secretary of the state’s Natural Resources Agency. “We have borrowed time in the delta. It has a high vulnerability to salt water intrusion with the risk of sea rise due to climate change. And there is earthquake risk.
“We cannot be left in legal uncertainty year after year due to lawsuits. Let’s see how we can streamline the lawsuit and give a thumbs up or a thumbs down to the tunnel.
And if it’s thumbs down, he says, the state can “go back to the drawing board and take a different approach.”
Opponents of the project – especially delta residents, including farmers – argue that future salt water intrusion is one reason why the tunnel should not be built. It would siphon water from the fresher northern delta before it could flow through the more salty southern end, as it does now, and push back the salty water that pushes in from San Francisco Bay.
The saltier water would spell disaster for Stockton, smaller delta communities and agriculture, opponents say.
As for the earthquake threat, no earthquake has ever damaged a delta dike and there are no major fractures below the estuary. Anyway, can’t a big earthquake damage an underground tunnel?
The fishing industry and boaters fear that reducing freshwater flows through the delta will decimate salmon streams and exacerbate toxic algae that clog waterways in the summer.
“The whole system has crashed” for salmon, says Barry Nelson, a consultant for the Golden State Salmon Assn. That’s partly due to giant fish-munching pumps in the southern delta and government regulations that often deprive baby salmon of strong enough water currents as they attempt to migrate out to sea.
“The tunnel could allow the (state) to dramatically increase the pumping of the Sacramento River system and further reduce the salmon population,” says Nelson.
That would depend on how the tunnel is regulated. But there is no confidence from government regulators among tunnel opponents.
Villapudua drafted a letter to Newsom and legislative leaders, signed by 10 legislators from both parties, requesting that the tunnel project be removed from the governor’s package.
“It wasn’t very wise to include the delta,” said Sen. John Laird (D-Santa Cruz), a former natural resources secretary who helped serve as then-governor. Jerry Brown’s failed two-tunnel project.
“A $16 billion project like (the tunnel) is likely to have significant impacts on a large, environmentally sensitive and important area. Something of that magnitude should not be accelerated by an environmental assessment process.
Oh yeah. The cost: Pretty much everyone knows that the price of that 45-mile, 39-foot-wide tunnel would be much more than advertised. And so far there is not even funding for it. Water users would pay.
Newsom should listen to Dirty Harry.
