Action Alert: Help Stop Water Marketing Bill in Sacramento

Action Alert: Help Stop Water Marketing Bill in Sacramento

Please send emails, faxes or letters to safeguard the public water trust


Help stop water marketing in its early stages! A bill in the California
State Legislature—Assembly Bill 1245 carried by Assembly Member Wolk
from Davis—would extend the life of a bogus environmental program that
uses state and federal tax dollars to further subsidize water exports
for industrial agriculture and Southern California water districts.

Water marketing – or selling bulk water in an open market – threatens
the principle that water is a public trust, part of our commons that
should be managed and sustained for public benefit, not treated as a
for-profit commodity. The energy crisis was a costly example of how
easily markets can be manipulated for private gain, at a huge expense to
society and the environment. We cannot afford to make the same mistake
with water.

The State of California holds all water resources in trust for the
people of California. No individual or company is able to own, buy or
sell water. Various entities have rights to use water, not to own it.
When residents pay their water bills they pay for the service of the
water delivery, not the water itself. A new trend, however, of water
marketing is emerging in California under ambiguous titles: “water
transfers” and “environmental water account.”

Assembly Bill 1245 would extend through 2009 the so-called Environmental
Water Account Fund. The EWA Fund makes the state of California
(Department of Water Resources) a water market auctioneer. The EWA Fund
would commodify water, allowing for its purchase and sale independent of
the service of providing water.

For a more detailed description of how the EWA has benefited private
business to the detriment of the environment and taxpayers, please see
our letter to the Assembly Water, Parks and Wildlife Committee available
online here: http://www.citizen.org/documents/PubCitOpposeAB1245.pdf

Please help stop this bill by writing or calling the bill’s author and
the Assembly Committee on Appropriations where the bill will be heard on
May 11 at 9am in room 4202 of the State Capitol. A sample letter and the
addresses are included below.


SAMPLE LETTER


Dear Chairwoman Chu and Committee Members,

Assembly Bill 1245 misappropriates state tax dollars to pay water
contractors to comply with federal endangered species law. Department of
Water Resources information shows that the Environmental Water Account
has cost state taxpayers between $20 and $50 million a year.

The program is intended to protect endangered Sacramento-San Joaquin
Delta fish species and provide water supply reliability for water
contractors downstream of the Delta. Over the past four years of this
program’s implementation, however, fish populations have plummeted to
record lows while water exports have reached record highs. Clearly the
program is not working.

Moreover, much of the taxpayer funds flowing south to contractors have
gone to a private business that is owned by one of the 50 wealthiest
individuals in Los Angeles, Westside Mutual Water Company. Westside
operates exclusively for Paramount Farming Company, the largest
privately owned agribusiness in the state. Paramount is perhaps the
single largest contractor for State Water Project water through the Kern
County Water Agency. Paramount can thus benefit doubly from the EWA: by
selling water to the EWA through Westside, and then receiving EWA water
from the state, courtesy of the taxpayers. The EWA Fund turns the state
of California into a water market broker, thus threatening the state’s
ability to safe-guard our public trust water resources.

I respectfully request that you vote no on AB 1245.

Sincerely,




ADDRESSES


Chairwoman Judy Chu
California State Assembly
Committee on Appropriations
State Capitol
P.O. Box 942848
Sacramento, CA 94248-0001
Rm 2114
Fax: 916.319.2181
Phone: 916-319-2049

Assembly Member Lois Wolk
State Capitol