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Unsure on Assurances
CALFED is expected - and devoutly hoped - to nurse the battered Bay-Delta ecosystem back to health. But what if some or all of the hundreds of actions in its Ecosystem Restoration Program Plan (ERPP) - ranging from restoring Central Valley streams to eradicating invasive species in the Delta - don't work? Many stakeholders are reluctant to sign off on any CALFED solution that doesn't provide a satisfactory answer to this question, one of several make-or-break issues the state-federal program is still grappling with as it steams toward the release of a revised draft EIS/EIR late this year.
"Ask any interest group whether they think their major concerns have been taken care of," challenges B.J. Miller. "This issue is the key to the success of CALFED, but there has been essentially no progress at all on addressing the fundamental political fears and desires of any interest group." Water exporters, for example, want assurance that if they give up water and provide funding to implement the ERPP, they will not have to give up more money or water ten years from now if the environment is not recovering or new species are listed under the Endangered Species Act. Environmentalists, on the other hand, want to make sure that they have the tools they need, including additional water and funding if necessary, to ensure environmental recovery.
A CALFED work group has been trying to develop the "assurances" that will answer these questions for two years, but many participants have been frustrated by slow progress and some now say the issue may be the biggest stumbling block the program has faced yet.
Part of the problem seems to be a fundamental disagreement over what the term "assurances" means. CALFED's Mike Heaton describes assurances as "the tools, mechanisms and processes that will be integrated into the plan to reassure people that the program will be implemented as proposed, as well as things that will prevent or mitigate adverse impacts that might come out of the implementation program." These tools might include new legislation, regulations, contracts or physical solutions, he says.
Heaton and other CALFED consultants say that to some extent the assurances are embodied in the program's implementation plan, which makes actions in one program area contingent upon actions or conditions in other areas. "The approach is to tie each program to the others, and tie benefits together so that everybody has an incentive to make the program work," says Mary Scoonover, legal counsel to CALFED.
Not good enough, say some work group participants. "CALFED seems to have defined assurances as process and implementation," says Cynthia Koehler of Save The Bay and the Environmental Water Caucus. "An implementation plan is not an assurance." Clearly identifying sources of water and money for the ERPP would be a good start on real assurances, says Koehler. The EWC is also calling for an assurances package that includes measurable performance standards for the ERPP with legal mandates to achieve them, controls on water project operations, and other mechanisms. "For the ecosystem piece of this at least, assurances boils down to the simple question of how do you make sure that the goal of ecosystem restoration is achieved?" says Koehler, adding that CALFED's response to EWC's proposal was "six pages of pure fluff."
CALFED's position, says Heaton, is that "we can assure that things get done, but we can't assure that these things will actually produce the results that we all want." Nevertheless, he says, there is widespread, though not universal, agreement on some assurances issues, such as the need to protect upstream water rights and to assure that revenue streams for the program do not rely on the highly politicized federal appropriations process.
In addition, say Heaton and others, there is growing consensus around the need for a new institutional entity to manage the ERPP, and possibly the CALFED program as a whole. "You're going to have all this money to spend and som e definite goals to accomplish - the logical thing is to pull this effort together under one umbrella," says Miller, adding that the new entity would probably be governed by representatives of various stakeholder groups, as well as the CALFED agencies. Questions remain, however, on virtually every aspect of the concept, including how much authority the entity would have and how big a budget it would need.
Despite the many issues still to be resolved, Heaton and Scoonover say that a "package" of assurances will be included in the revised EIS/EIR released later this year. And in the meantime, says Scoonover, "there will be a bigger emphasis on assurances over the next six months than any other program element."
Contact Mike Heaton (916)657-2666; or Cynthia Koehler (510)452-9261
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