In California, Water Pressure Builds With New Development
By JIM CARLTON Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
VALENCIA, Calif. -- Newhall Ranch here in the Santa Clarita Valley, a development that plans to include 22,000 master-planned homes in this suburb north of Los Angeles, has become the bull's eye in California's intensifying water war.
Planned to sprawl for several miles along the Santa Clara River, one of the last free-flowing tributaries in Southern California, and nestled in the shadow of the 3,000-foot-high Santa Susana Mountains, Newhall would be home to 60,000 people living in five villages. A promotional brochure described the development as a "self-contained community in a natural, open setting."
But the project, the largest housing development ever to be built in California, has drawn controversy almost from when it first was proposed five years ago. Environmentalists argue that it is one of hundreds of large residential developments that have been approved by local planners during the past decade that don't include provisions for an adequate water supply.
The issue has been heating up since 1995, when a state law went into effect that required planners to address water-availability issues when they reviewed housing developments for approval. However, the law provided so little for enforcement that more than 50 large subdivisions have been approved since then without affording those guarantees. As a result, environmental groups and some water districts are asking the state to curtail big construction plans such as Newhall, while pushing for legislation that would prevent the issuance of construction permits until water questions are resolved. A bill to do that is pending in the state Assembly.
Readying for Drought
The environmentalists aren't pushing for an actual halt to construction; rather, many want a stronger emphasis on building higher-density projects in urban areas that already have ready access to water supplies. They want other developments to go forward only if planners can assure there will be enough water for them.
Conservationists say unless growth is limited, the semiarid state will be ill prepared for another drought, which many experts say is overdue after an unusually long, six-year run of abundant moisture. "We have a crisis in the making," says Doug Wallace, environmental-affairs officer for the East Bay Municipal Utility District, which provides water to the fast-growing suburbs east of San Francisco.
California coped with its past droughts, the last of which ran from 1987 to 1992, by issuing restrictions and imposing measures such as increased use of recycled water for landscaping and flush-control mechanisms on toilets. But the state's conservation measures are considered so extensive already that many experts say there is little room for further cutbacks.
The industrial community is particularly vulnerable, since new cutbacks could force water-intensive operations such as bottling and silicon-fabrication plants to scale back. "There is a very real danger that in the next drought we will start to lose jobs," says Syrus Devers, senior consultant to Assemblywoman Sheila Kuehl, a Santa Monica Democrat who introduced the legislation.
Growing Population, Fixed Supply
Many builders and manufacturers oppose the bill, saying it would put up an onerous regulatory hurdle for developers at a time when housing-starved California needs all the new homes it can get. They argue more for expanding the state's water-delivery system. "The real issue is we need to develop more reservoirs and other water infrastructure to accommodate the increasing demand," says Jeff Sickenger, director of environmental quality for the California Manufacturers and Technology Association. A joint project between the state and the federal government plans to invest billions of dollars during the next 30 years to expand and upgrade California's water-supply systems, though environmentalists say that won't happen soon enough.
Californians have been fighting over water ever since Los Angeles diverted water out of the eastern Sierra Nevada in the early 1900s, helping to dry up Mono Lake. In later decades, California squabbled with neighboring Western states such as Arizona and Nevada over rights to the Colorado River, while intrastate warfare broke out in the 1970s and 1980s over diversion of water from moist northern California to the arid southern part of the state.
Water supplies have become an issue in other regions now being hammered by drought. Officials in Florida, for instance, have imposed limits on outdoor watering, while Atlanta has curbed residential and industrial use. But California's water problems are potentially the most far-reaching in the nation, because so much of the country's growth and wealth are concentrated here. California's population of about 35 million -- by far the largest in the U.S. -- is projected to add another 15 million inhabitants during the next quarter century.
Yet, water supplies in the Golden State are relatively finite: The cities, farms and factories depend on a combination of runoff from the Sierra and Cascade ranges in the northern part of the state, the Colorado River from the Rocky Mountains and underground storage aquifers.
Ground Zero in Santa Clarita
A microcosm of the statewide fight is taking place over Newhall Ranch. Currently, about 74,000 acre-feet of water is used in the Santa Clarita Valley annually, compared with a total average supply of 85,000 acre-feet, according to estimates by the Santa Clarita Organization for Planning and the Environment, an environmental association that has bitterly opposed Newhall and other projects in the area. (An acre-foot is the amount of water used by a family of five in one year.)
But Newhall would use about 21,600 acre-feet of water a year. Moreover, Los Angeles County officials have approved another 40,000 housing units in the valley -- creating a total deficit of about 46,000 acre-feet when they are all built, according to the Santa Clarita planning group.
Newhall officials insist there is plenty of water, arguing that the local water supply actually stands at a minimum of 143,000 acre-feet, when figuring in other sources that the activists dispute. They also say they and other developers merely are responding to demand for more housing, which in fast-growing Los Angeles County comes to about 26,000 new homes a year. "Overall, I think we have the future very well planned," says Gary Cusumano, Newhall's president.
Los Angeles County officials agreed when they approved the project last year. But opponents filed suit in California Superior Court, seeking to block the development on grounds including lack of water. Joining environmentalists and some local social-assistance groups in the litigationwas neighboring Ventura County, where officials fear Newhall would siphon off water needed to irrigate farms downstream.
One particularly contentious issue is Newhall's estimates of how much water the valley will receive from various sources. For example, it says the valley has 95,200 acre-feet allotted in nondrought years from the State Water Project. However, 41,000 of those acre-feet are included as part of a deal local water districts signed last year to buy water rights from farming interests in Kern County, farther north in California's San Joaquin Valley. That transfer is being litigated by an environmental group called Friends of the Santa Clara River, who are concerned the added water wouldn't be available in times of drought, putting more pressure on groundwater reserves.
Moreover, the Castaic Lake Water Agency that channels state water into the valley recently advised that only 50% of allocations should be planned for reliably, because deliveries fluctuate widely due to factors such as regulatory restrictions on pumping or natural disasters.
"What we are all really trying to do," says Ed Dunn, a director of that agency who is opposed to Newhall Ranch, "is stop gambling with water in California."