Three things of long-term significance for the California golf community occurred last week, all of them involving water:
The Great Culling – What Came off Appropriations Suspense Files and What Didn’t
Two (2) bills that we were watching with great interest to see whether they survived their respective Appropriations processes – one a bill we strongly supported, one a bill we were tracking, and both strong harbingers of the trajectory of California water law and policy – did come off suspense and move to floor votes that will occur sometime between now and end of session the 1st week of September.
SB 366 (Caballero; D-Merced)
In late May we reported that “It isn’t often that one bill can highlight all that separates one side of California’s great water divide from the other – from those interests fixated on conservation as the focus of future supply and those intent on pursuing a more diversified portfolio – from those who are often accused of believing that California can conserve its way out of its aridification predicament and those who are convinced that if conservation is the only tool in the state’s water resiliency toolbox, California is doomed to be hollowed out in much the same way rust belt cities like Pittsburgh and Detroit were in the last quarter of the 20th Century.”
SB 366 was that bill. Tagged “California Water Plan: Long Term Supply Targets,” SB 366 would revise and recast certain provisions regarding The California Water Plan to, among other things, require the department to coordinate with the California Water Commission, the State Water Resources Control Board, other state and federal agencies as appropriate, and a stakeholder advisory committee to develop a comprehensive plan for addressing the state’s water needs and meeting specified long-term water supply targets established by the bill for purposes of The California Water Plan. It would go beyond the current approach to water supply planning by establishing for the 1st time in the history of the state specific targets to be met by certain dates and requires a financing plan for achieving these targets.
Given that the California golf community’s long-term interest lies with the side of the “great water divide” that finds conservation to be an important but by no means the only tool in the state’s water resiliency toolbox, the California Alliance for Golf (CAG) joined more than 100 hundred other organizations in support of the bill when it was heard in the Assembly Water, Parks, and Wildlife Committee in June, where it passed through on a unanimous bipartisan 13-0 vote.
When Senator Caballero presented her bill to the Assembly Committee in June, she noted that California had already adopted 81 targets in support of electrifying and otherwise decarbonizing the state, making it more than reasonable to adopt targets for the supply of something as vital to the sustainability of the state as water. She cited the same UCLA/UC Merced/UC Davis study that the bill’s sponsor (California Municipal Utilities Association) cited in their support of the bill – “The Magnitude of California’s Water Challenges” – a study that makes a strong case that changed climactic conditions in the Sierra Nevada and Colorado Basin all but guarantee that California is looking at somewhere between a 10 and 20 percent loss of supply by 2050. Without focusing on certain 21st Century supply modes (e.g., storm water capture, aquifer recharge, reuse – potable and non-potable, desalination) in addition to continuing to ramp up all forms of conservation, the state won’t be able to thrive.
As amended subsequent to that Assembly committee hearing to assuage the criticisms of environmental organizations concerned that some of the “supply” envisaged by the bill might come at the expense of the water used to maintain the environmental integrity of the Sacramento Delta, SB 366 moved to Assembly Appropriations where last Thursday it moved off Suspense and forward to what is almost certain to be a successful floor vote. To which we would add that given the fact that SB 366 author Senator Caballero is Chair of Senate Appropriations, it is highly unlikely that Governor Newsom will veto it, notwithstanding the expense associated with it in a year in which the state is trying to cope with a substantial deficit.
The success of this bill represents a huge shift in the state’s approach to coping with the effects of aridification – from an almost single-minded obsession with conservation as the primary tool to a more diversified approach that combines conservation with the construction of a 21st Century appropriate equivalent of the 20th Century’s State Water Project. While that offers relief to a sector like golf that is sure to be among the first activities on the chopping block should circumstances become as dire as they were just 23 short months ago before Mother Nature bailed us out with record precipitation, do keep in mind that massive infrastructure projects are massively expensive, and the costs therefore are sure to fall disproportionately upon those that are large consumers of water. For both practical and political reasons, it behooves golf to keep developing and playing conservation cards, albeit that too is a resource consumptive activity. When it comes to water in Southern California all roads lead to increased costs of doing business – costs sure to always run ahead of the CPI.
AB 460 (Bauer-Kahan; D-San Ramon)
A bill that was pulled and made a 2-year bill by its author late in 2023 due to the limited time available at the end of the 2023 session to craft the amendments necessary to earn the votes required for passage, AB 460 is another in a string of recent bills that presage a reworking of certain established “water rights” increasingly seen as impediments to achieving long-term water sustainability and equity. In short, AB 460 gives the State Water Resources Control Board (SWRCB) the enforcement tools (interim relief orders and hefty fines) capable of effectively policing the ”illegal diversions” now capable of the documentation necessary to deem them “illegal” per a bill authored by Senator Ben Allen (D-Redondo Beach) and signed by the Governor last year – another of the bills presaging the reworking of certain established water rights.
With an amendment extending the commencement date envisaged therein, AB 460 escaped Suspense last week and moves to what is almost certain to be a positive floor vote. The significance for the golf community: Expect more of this as time passes; as with last Century’s water capture and conveyance infrastructure, what worked for the 19th and 20th Centuries is simply not going to work for the 21st.
Imperial Irrigation District Gives Back 700 Million Acre-Feet of Water
In an arrangement complicated by certain trade-offs with the San Diego County Water Authority that in the opinion of multiple environmental organizations blunts its impact and doubles down on the environmental catastrophe known as the Salton Sea, the largest user of Colorado River water, the Imperial Irrigation District (IID), has agreed to voluntarily forgo 700 million acre-feet of its allocation between now and 2026. That is when the seven states and the agencies operating within those states are set to agree to a new long-term Compact in which all of them agree to cede some of their extant allocation to accommodate the significantly lessened water production of the Colorado Basin.
While the number of golf courses in the Imperial Irrigation District are few and very far between, the same cannot be said for the number of golf courses in the other areas of Southern California dependent in some part upon Colorado River water for their needs.
For the 19 million Southern California customers of the Metropolitan Water District (MWD), including those in Ventura County and parts of Los Angeles County that don’t have access to Colorado River supplies, the impact is obvious to the degree to which it presages what is likely going to come out of the 2026 negotiations going on right now. For the Coachella Valley Water District (CVWD) that serves more than 100 golf courses, though those golf courses are not potable customers, they are in part reliant upon raw water from the Colorado River to supplement pumping, and the 35,000 acre-feet that the Coachella Valley is ceding back to the River at the moment is water that the District had been annually contributing to its Levy Spreading Grounds, a forbearance made possible in part by Mother Nature’s recent bounty and the fact that the aquifer beneath is capable of stasis without that water between now and 2026. But as CVWD has reminded its active Golf & Water Task Force, that forbearance is temporary, and the permanent cuts beyond 2026 may well be higher once those negotiations are completed.
One more thing for the golf community to consider. The cuts made in IID are made possible by paying farmers handsomely to fallow fields that support crops amenable to fallowing, e.g., hay. That is not an option for golf courses, which even if they were amenable to fallowing, no public largesse would ever be made available to something so purely discretionary and recreational as golf.
DWR’s State Water Project Delivery Capability Report
Consistent with the Governor’s data in his Executive Order “Making Conservation a California Way of Life,” the UCLA/UC Merced/UC Davis study cited by the sponsors of SB 366, and every other credible academic and governmental analysis of the state’s water situation, the California Department of Water Resources (DWR) most recent annual report on the capability of the State Water Project’s ability to deliver water to the Southern part of the state has downgraded that capability. DWR now reports that California can expect somewhere in the range of 13-23 percent less water therefrom in the next 20 years. A 23 percent decline would be equivalent to about 496,000 acre-feet a year, enough to supply 1,736,000 homes for a year.
Rare is the instance in which all the data point in the same direction. We may not like the direction, but certain knowledge of direction does spare us from having to slog through conflicting evidence to figure our best course forward.
A Few Thoughts in Closing
First, anyone who thought that the pressure to investigate new cards to play in the game known as water footprint reduction and then invest in them might lessen in the coming years, needs to think again. Everything screams the opposite. Risk aversion in current circumstances poses the much greater risk.
Second, anyone who fails to understand that the need to modernize and upgrade what everyone agrees is an outmoded water capture and conveyance infrastructure can only add to the real costs of conducting golf operations in California fails to anticipate and prepare for the inevitable. And in the process may just plain fail.
Third, notwithstanding the first two “thoughts,” we should be encouraged by just how well the golf community again fared in Sacramento. The bills we opposed either failed or were amended to our satisfaction (e.g., AB 3192 & SB 1413). The bills we supported are either on their way to the Governor’s desk (e.g., SB 366) or gained sufficient traction to merit a future credible run (e.g., AB 2947). The lone late session surprise was cured when the author of last year’s “junk fees” law (Dodd; D-Napa) rushed through a gut-and-amend emergency bill to make clear that restaurants were never meant to come under its provisions. The reception we again received from Members, Staffers, and agencies made clear that the game’s stock continues to rise in Sacramento. And all told, this should give the golf community confidence that the advocacy tools it has developed in recent years can be sharpened if necessary to continue coping with whatever Mother Nature and human institutions throw its way.
- SCGA Public Affairs Team