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This is $5.4 billion towards efforts to protect our supply of safe drinking water, flood control, as well as a fat chunk of change for various conservancies, rivers, lakes and streams. Oh and there’s some money for the state park system, forests, wildlife habitat protection, and protection for ranches and farms too (what, you thought this was just a water bond? ;-).

According to the detailed information on the bill, we already have $1.4 billion in unspent bond money for these kinds of projects. Throw in proposition 1E and you have to wonder why you should vote for yet another water bill.

Well, the reasons are many fold. First of all, 1E doesn’t really address availability of drinking water for emergencies (not sure about the remaining $1.4 billion). Nor does it do anything for all the various conservation funds for parks, ranches, farms, etc. Of course, these kinds of things are kind of on going commitments rather than one time infrastructure investments if you ask me. There are a few specific projects, like restoration of the San Joaquin River and Colorado River, but all in all, this seems to me like things that should be paid out of the general fund.

Oh, this bill also allows a lot of the spending to bypass normal contracting and procurement requirements (can you say, “No Bid Contract”?) because of the pressing need to spend this money quickly.

Sorry. I can’t possibly see why this kind of spending shouldn’t come from the state general fund and be subject to the usual contracting and procurement requirements. This stuff is important and can and is addressed by the legislature. Maybe it’s worth talking to your representative about increasing the budget for these projects, but I just can’t see floating a bond for this stuff.

At this point I expect the eyes of most voters will have glazed over and they’ll just give up the struggle to look closely at this last bond measure in the 1 Plan agenda. That’s certainly what I want to do.

Nonetheless, let’s take a peak. Basically, this bill is going to save us from Katrina…. Okay, seriously, it would help us to shore up the Central Valley in particular against flooding that really could create a state wide disaster.

Generally, this sort of stuff has been paid for from a variety of sources: federal funding, the state general fund, and a lot of it has been contracted out to local governments. There’s kind of a strange structure to this, as a lot of the responsibility is in the hands of local governments even though the state has a serious interest in seeing that waterways and the water supply be maintained.

The killer part of this bill from me came from reading this detailed assessment: “The Department of Water Resources (DWR) has made rough estimates of the cost to repair and upgrade the Central Valley flood control system and levees in the Delta of between $7 billion and $12 billion.”

If it’s going to cost between $7-12 billion to fix the system, why are we issuing a bond for only $4 billion? Do we really think the feds and local government are going to make up the rest? I don’t see any kind of plan supporting this, so I’m forced to conclude that we can expect to see additional bonds in years to come.

I have to agree that we have a problem here with our water systems, and they aren’t sexy so politicians tend to have difficulty selling this problem, but our governor drew it to Bush’s attention recently, and the state legislature managed to find $500 million from the general fund to work on the problem this year. Particularly if you think the federal house might shift democratic this election, you have to think California is going to have an easier time getting federal money for this problem.

While I recognize the problem, the solution to me seems to be grabbing money from the general fund, petitioning the feds for more money, and letting local governments handle the rest, rather than packing on more debt to only partially solve the problem. That’s where the money has traditionally come from, and aside from the headline grabbing nature of Katrina, it seems like that’s the way things ought to continue to operate.