Opinion

Why is governor picking a water fight?

What the governor's office billed as a "path forward on California's water future" turned into a step back. In announcing a plan Wednesday for a pair of pipes to move water south around the eastern periphery of the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, Gov. Jerry Brown told the assembled officials and press, "We're going to make stuff happen. We're going to take into account the opposition. And if we have to fight initiatives and referendums, we'll fight those too."

Why is the governor going out of his way to pick a fight?

In the past few weeks, the groups working to figure out how to balance California's water needs and restore the delta ecosystem have found consensus - or at least the seeds of consensus. Recognizing that the courts would continue to determine California's water future unless efforts focused on developing a legal plan, planners reorganized around a simple framework: fish first.

Then comes the governor's announcement of a "preferred alternative" where size matters, not fish.

We're looking to the governor to lead us to a water future based on what's best for the entire state. The governor will fail to secure the legacy he seeks unless he lets science, not politics, determine water exports.

Maybe Brown is reliving the 1982 battle over the Peripheral Canal - a major campaign during his previous term as governor and a plan that The Chronicle and voters vigorously opposed- but the water world has moved on. "This is not the same argument we had even 20 years ago," said Rep. George Miller, D-Martinez, in an interview. "We know there would be water exports."

What's different today is a 2009 agreement hammered out in the Legislature that required a plan to respect the co-equal goals of developing a reliable water supply and a healthy delta ecosystem. A project designed for maximum water deliveries will not earn the necessary permits from the state and federal fish agencies if the science says the delta web of life cannot survive taking away that much water.

That's why the delta communities and their congressional representatives complained when the governor announced a plan to build a "conveyance" with three intakes in the Sacramento River and twin tunnels to move the water to the state pumps south of Tracy. It was a raw political compromise, whittled down from a previously discussed five-intake project.

Can the delta ecosystem handle the water exports of the three-intake project or even the bigger project? No one knows, because that is not what the scientists were asked to study. Yet the governor says, "No one can ever say that we haven't studied enough."

The governor's combative quips also seemed out of sync with the tone of the state and federal officials who shared the podium. "Good science must be and will be at the center of the solution," U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said in his remarks.

Roger Patterson, No. 2 at the Metropolitan Water District, told The Chronicle Editorial Board on Tuesday that flows would be decided by "fish first." MWD is the biggest buyer of state water and will bear the lion's share of the $14 billion project's engineering and construction costs.

We support a science-based solution that balances water exports and delta health. That may result in the governor's "preferred alternative." We don't have the science to know yet.

The twin tunnels may help resolve long-standing water quality and delta ecosystem problems. As a gravity-flow system, it would reduce pumping, which is expensive, kills 50 percent of the young salmon and harms the native fish by reversing river flows.

Or the plan may exacerbate existing problems. South of the delta residents worry more saltwater would invade farmland if freshwater flows are rerouted around the estuary. For the same reason, the Contra Costa County Water District fears salinity levels will rise in the drinking water it takes from the delta.

The tunnels would bypass the delta's deteriorating levees that protect farmlands - and the city of Sacramento. "Once they've spent $14 billion on the pipes, they aren't going to spend another penny on the levees," said Rep. Jerry McNerney, D-Stockton. "It's hard to see how this plan could be beneficial to us."

Balancing these needs and concerns is California's water future. We need the governor to lead us there, not just tell us he's going to "make stuff happen" because he's 74 and impatient on his second tour of duty in the governor's office.