Federal foray into state water rights?

The federal government has been intimately involved with state water quality programs since Congress passed the Clean Water Act amendments in 1972. Although they may not have liked it, states have enacted legislation to comply with federal pollution control mandates for more than 20 years. The issue of who controls the supply of water, however, has always been a state prerogative. Until now.

On Dec. 15 of last year, "Club Fed"--the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Bureau of Reclamation, Fish & Wildlife Service and National Marine Fisheries Service--proposed stringent salinity standards for California's San Francisco Bay/Delta to protect salmon and striped bass habitat. The effect of the standards, in the agencies' estimation, is to reduce by 9 percent to 21 percent the volume of water that can be pumped from the area and transported south in order to provide enough freshwater flow for spawning fish.

The federal action was triggered after Governor Pete Wilson withdrew the state's interim standards for the Bay/Delta on April 1, 1993, and an environmental coalition filed suit against EPA for failure to promptly propose federal replacements.

The governor has blasted what he sees as a federal attempt to control the allocation of California's scarce water supply. More than 5 million acre-feet of water (an acre-foot meets the annual needs of a family of four) is exported from the delta each year to irrigate farmland in the San Joaquin Valley and provide drinking water for Southern California residents. Agricultural interests have joined the governor to protest the potential loss of farming jobs.

On the other side...