Goodthing all that budget nastiness has abated in Sacramento, because someone's mentioned the"D" word and that's always good for controversy.
So grab acopy of "Chinatown"and pop some corn. We're in for with a drought of water but a flood offinger-pointing.
Waterwars kicked off Friday, when state water officials called for allCalifornians to cut water use 20 percent.
That camejust hours after the Departmentof Water Resources announced that it would be able to deliver only 15percent of allocations to contractors supplying farms and cities across thestate, and federal officials said allotments to the Central ValleyProject, which supplies about half the state's agriculture industry, likelywould be only 50 percent.
Forecasterssay that even a wetter-than-normal February won't be enough to pull the stateout of its thirdstraight summer of drought.
How badis it? Water Resources says major state reservoirs are down to 43 percentof capacity. Statewide precipitation levels aren't as low as they wereduring the 1975-77 drought, but they're worse than they were 1987-1992. Gov.Arnold Schwarzenegger iscalling it "one of the worst water crises in (the state's) history."
Lastyear, more than 100,000 acres were left unplanted in the Central Valley,and experts predict that number could soar to nearly 850,000 acres this year, accordingto The New York Times.
Theimpact extends far beyond California, with therest of the nation paying more for produce because California will grow less crops.
If thefinancial world hadn't blown to bits, Californiavoters might have decided how to proceed by voting on competing ballot measureslast fall.
One,backed by Schwarzenegger, U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein and business and aginterests, would have been a $9.3billion bond that including a chunk of money for dams - that's another"D" word in Californiawater politics. A competing$6.8 billion plan, supported by legislative Democrats, would have focusedon conservation.
Officialspulled back on both due to budget problems.
So herewe are, in the middle of a drought that really couldn't have picked amore inconvenient financial time, defaulting to behavior easily predicted basedon historic patterns.
NorthernCalifornia blames Southern California for tending golf courses and fillingpools with precious water taken out of the Central Valley.But then Central Valley folks bristle at the idea of water meters that wouldend flat rates for as much as they can drink - or, in many cases, spill ontothe streets by overwatering.
Environmentalistsoppose anything that resembles a dam or canal. Ag interests say they conserveas much as they can, though clearly innovationssuch as drip irrigation have improved efficiency. Efforts at the nationallevel, such asthe CalFed project, take years to pass as the same differences that dividethe state divide its congressional delegation.
Here'ssomething the delegation and the state should be able to come together on:Making the state's case a federal case, and making sure the rest of the nationunderstands the consequences on their grocery bills if they want to takeanother whack at whittling mighty California down to size.
Whackssuch as the ones where Republicans had a field day with a $50 million stimulusbill appropriation to "California Bay-Delta Restoration Act,"painting it as some touchy-feely snail darter-esque pet project of HouseSpeaker Nancy Pelosi. It's not: It's CalFed funding.
PresidentBarack Obama's into green technology, and there's plenty of opportunity forthat here as well, ranging from water reuse to desalination.
Yes,Californians must do their part, too, and that message is not getting acrossstatewide. TheLos Angeles Times story on the Friday announcement, for example, didn'tmention conservation until six paragraphs into an article that painted thedrought mainly as a problem for agriculture.
It's not.It's a problem for all of us, in Californiaand the country as a whole.