Role for Davis in Water Dispute

The Davis administration has been plunged into the middle of California’s most critical and acrimonious water issue. State legislators and leaders of four giant Southern California water agencies have called on Gov. Gray Davis’ water chief, Tom Hannigan, to help negotiate an agreement on the allocation of California’s share of Colorado River water.

Davis’ style has been to bring disputing parties together so settlements can be mediated, not dictated. In this case, the parties have been at the table for two years and remain bitterly deadlocked. Someone needs to get the talks on track, and Hannigan, the logical choice despite being new on the job, was drafted during a hearing held Wednesday by the Senate and Assembly water committees.

The action came after Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt warned that California has just a few months left to agree on a plan for keeping the use of Colorado River water within the state’s allocation of 4.4 million acre-feet a year. California has taken as much as 5.2 million acre-feet in recent years by drawing on surplus supplies. Unless the state develops a plan to live within its water means, Babbitt will be under intense pressure from other Colorado River Basin states to cut off future surplus supplies to California. The situation is, as he put it, “very, very grave.”

Babbitt has done yeoman’s work in carrying the negotiations forward himself in recent months, but he broke off talks recently when Southern California’s Metropolitan Water District balked at parts of the proposed agreement, including a big water trade between the Imperial Irrigation District and the San Diego County Water Authority. But this is a California problem that must be solved by Californians. And that requires direct, forceful intervention by the Davis administration now.