California Lawmakers Introduce Major CalFed Water Bill

California Congresswomen Grace Napolitano (D-Norwalk) and Ellen Tauscher (D-Alamo) today introduced a CalFed reauthorization bill that would dramatically increase water supplies to California while protecting the environment. 

“The House Resources Committee passed a bill that fails to reflect the values of a great many Californians,” said Rep. Tauscher.  “Our bill would ensure a better water supply for people in urban and suburban areas, better protect the environment and promote the kind of forward-looking solutions it will take to meet our water needs in the future.” 

“The bill we are introducing today will allow Southern California to cope with the reality of decreased access to the Colorado River,” said Rep. Napolitano.  “Our bill aims to protect the fragile ecosystem in the Bay Delta and promote the use of advanced technology such as water recycling, desalination, conservation and sound groundwater management.”

The Napolitano-Tauscher bill, called the CalFed Bay-Delta Authorization Act, represents the views of a significant number of California communities and water districts and is strongly favored by environmental organizations. 

The bill has three major objectives – provide a simple authorization of the ongoing CalFed program to restore the health of the San Francisco Bay-Delta; authorize the planning, design and construction of new facilities that are capable of producing more than a half-million acre feet annually of new water from water recycling projects; and authorize desalination projects. 

The bill marks a significant departure from Rep. Ken Calvert’s (R-Corona) bill, HR 3208.  It does not guarantee specific amounts of water deliveries for certain agriculture districts at the expense of limiting deliveries to the environment and suburban, urban users like the Calvert bill currently does.

For the past two decades, California’s population has grown by over 30 percent while the water supply has increased by only 2 percent.  California’s Department of Water Resources estimates that by 2020, the annual shortage of water will reach the equivalent of the water needs of more than two to six million families for an entire year. 

Compounding the problem, much of the state’s water supply comes from the San Francisco Bay-Delta, the largest estuary on the West Coast.  The Bay-Delta ecosystem includes 70,000 acres of wetlands and supports over 120 fish and wildlife species.  Over the years, it has deteriorated as more water has been exported to meet Southern California’s growing population and the Central Valley’s agricultural needs.  

The CalFed Bay-Delta Authorization Act is supported by the Water ReUse Association, Latino Issues Forum, and the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce, Natural Resources Defense Council, and the Sierra Club. 

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Representative Grace Napolitano, 34th District of California 1609 Longworth Building, Washington, DC 20515    Phone 202-225-5256       Fax 202-225-0027 This is an official Web site of the United States House of Representatives.