What’s Wrong with the Water Bond?

from Noelle Ferdon, Central Valley organizer for Food and Water Watch

California’s budget is in crisis; vital education, health and public safety services are on the chopping block. But this November, Governor Schwarzenegger and the state Legislature will ask California voters to pass an $11.1 billion water bond loaded down with special-interest projects. Instead of focusing on sustainable longterm water supply and water quality policies, the bond would provide a massive subsidy to corporate interests and wasteful and polluting technologies, including new dams and desalination.

1. Corporations Win, Taxpayers Lose.

The bond is a raw deal for taxpayers. Bonds are loans that the state must pay back with interest. That means that over the next 30 years, the bond will suck nearly $24 billion (the original $11.1 billion, plus interest) from the state’s general fund at the expense of essential services including education, transportation, parks, police, and fire protection.

The bond opens the door to privatization of our water. At the last minute, a provision was added to the bond that lets private corporations own and profit from public water projects.

Taxpayers will be hit again and again: to finance the bond’s repayment, to provide a profit to water corporations upon which the public will depend, and to pay for essential services that we could no longer afford because of debt payments to the bond.

The bond would also make up to $1 billion of taxpayers’ money available for desalination, an expensive and polluting process that removes salt from seawater. Publically funded desalination plants could be wholly owned by private corporations, which would then profit from the sale of drinking water to consumers.

2. Bailout for Corporate Polluters.

The bond rewards bad water stewardship. After years of polluting our ground and surface water with pesticides, animal waste, industrial chemicals and other contaminants, big businesses in California would get more water handouts from the bond. Communities without safe drinking water would be left in the lurch. Less than 1 percent of bond funds are guaranteed to make it to disadvantaged communities that need the most help. That’s why groups like the Environmental Justice Coalition for Water have come out against the bond.

3. Kills Fish, Pollutes Our Rivers.

More dams mean more environmental destruction. The bond would provide $3 billion in funding to enlarge existing dams or construct new dams and other water storage projects. California already has nearly 1,500 dams that divert water and threaten endangered fish populations, including salmon. Pacific Coast salmon populations are nearly extinct. Existing dams remain well below capacity most of the time.

4. The Bond Doesn’t Fund Real Solutions to California’s Water Problems.

Only 2 percent of bond funds are set aside for conservation programs. Using water more efficiently is the most cost-effective solution and the only means of a long-term sustainability of our water resources. Groundwater cleanup and infrastructure improvements receive only a small fraction of total bond funds.

What’s more, because the bond prioritizes funding for dams, the water quality and conservation programs wouldn’t receive bond funding until years after its passage. For this reason, environmental groups like Friends of the River and the Sierra Club have come out against the bond.

Help Stop the Bond and Demand Better Water Policies!

Food & Water Watch and our coalition partners are working hard to spread the word about this wasteful bond. Join us to help defeat the bond in November and advocate for water policies that benefit all Californians!

There are lots of ways to contribute. We can help you organize a house party or a film screening to raise awareness about the issue. You can talk with local organizations and congregations and ask them to endorse the “No on the Water Bond” campaign. Look and listen for media coverage of water issues. Write a letter to the editor, call into a radio show, and spread the word!

For more information call Noelle Ferdon, Central Valley office, Chico: (415) 293-9907 and visit our website: www.foodandwaterwatch.org/no-water-bond.

BEC Stands Against the Water Bond

Butte Environmental Council sees no local advantage from this huge new bond proposal. The bond ballot measure, if it passes in November, would fund projects in other areas of the state that would negatively affect our local environment and water resources. Water bonds are already approved and available to be sold for local water projects.

The big bond projects that November’s bond measure would fund will require extensive environmental review and most likely lead to expensive court battles to stop additional massive transfers of water from our local ecosystems.

If the bond passes, the state and corporate interests will gain more control of our local water resources. The bond will fund long deep straws into our land, pipelines to mismanagement and unsustainable uses of local water.

To keep the water in our creeks and under our feet and to support local water management, vote no on the water bond on the November ballot.

Send messages to the Butte County Board of Supervisors, Butte County Department of Water and Resource Conservation, and local irrigation districts to strongly stand against the water bond on the November ballot.

From the Spring 2010 issue of the Environmental News.