CALIFORNIA: Liquid Sunshine

In the beginning, California was created with plenty of water and plenty of sunshine. But the big trouble turned out to be that the water was in the north, and the warmest sun—along with ever-multiplying millions of sun-worshiping citizens —was spread over dry, arid Southern California. Even though thirsty Los Angeles and vicinity piped water 300 miles from the faraway Owens Valley, and more water from the Colorado River, Southern California seemed doomed to run out of enough water by 1970 unless some agreement could be worked out to draw a substantial amount of water from the suspicious and unsympathetic north.

Last week, after months in which he moved political mountains, California’s new Democratic Governor, Edmund G. Brown, pushed through the state legislature a program that will link the north’s water to the south’s thirst in the most elaborate aqueduct system in the world.

Over the Range. Heart of the program is a $2 billion linkage of new dams, new reservoirs, new aqueducts, new levees (see map) that will take 25 years to complete. Principal source of water will be northern California’s surging Feather River, backed up behind a new earthen dam at Oroville, a few feet higher than the famed 727-ft. Hoover Dam. From there water will be channeled to the Delta Pool at the confluence of the Sacramento and San Joaquin Rivers and thence by aqueduct down the Central Valley (by 1965-66), across the Tehachapi Mountains to a new Castaic Reservoir for Los Angeles (by 1971), across the San Bernardino Mountains to the Ferris Reservoir to service Riverside, San Bernardino, Orange and San Diego Counties (by 1981).

For their part, the northern counties will get flood controls out of the new dams and levees, will be able to store heavy spring runoffs in the new reservoirs for use in the summer and fall. The southern San Francisco Bay area will be able to tap the first supplies of new water as early as 1962.

Over the Top. The Feather River project, examined in a ten-year study authorized in 1947, was approved by the legislature in 1951. But Brown’s Republican predecessors had despaired of ever getting the necessary detail bills through the north-south rivalry in the state senate (where thinly populated northern counties can match populous southern counties vote for vote).

Pat Brown brought to the battle the new factors of 1) solid Democratic control of both houses of the legislature, 2) the let’s-all-be-reasonable touch that has become his political trademark. He found ways to duck and sidestep the ancient obstacles, finally threw all his new political power into the balance (“It’s time to start moving dirt and stop throwing mud”) to force his key bill through the senate last month with a 25-12 victory. In the assembly he beat down incipient rebellions to win last week’s 50-30 passage.

All Brown’s water troubles are not over. Next year he must get voter approval of the 50-year, $1,750,000,000 bond issue that will cover most of the expense (the state expects $230 million in federal help), and beyond that lie a hundred lesser snags. But the new project will get dirt moving on the big dam site at Oroville (using $172 million in tideland-oil revenues). Brown guesses that once dirt flies, the rest will come easy—and California respects the guess of the Governor who has grappled with the water issue and made the state like it.