Jerry Brown Supports Construction of Peripheral Canal

Jerry Brown Supports Construction of Peripheral Canal

by Dan Bacher

Jerry Brown, the Democratic candidate for Governor, said he supports building a peripheral canal/tunnel to ship water to southern California and corporate agribusiness during the debate with Republican Meg Whitman in Davis Tuesday night.

Up until the debate, Brown had refused to take a position on the controversial canal and water bond. However, political pressure by agribusiness, southern California water agencies and corporate environmental NGOs including the Nature Conservancy has apparently forced him to adopt a pro-canal stand.

A broad coalition of conservationists, Indian Tribes, fishing groups, Delta residents, environmental justice advocates and family farmers opposes the peripheral canal and water bond. Canal opponents believe the canal will lead to the extinction of collapsing populations of Central Valley steelhead, Sacramento River chinook salmon, Delta smelt, longfin smelt, Sacramento splittail and green sturgeon. The canal would cost an estimated $23 to $53.8 billion.

"The old issue of a canal to bring water to Southern California reemerged in tonight's debate," according to Anthony York of the LA Times in his piece, "Brown-Whitman Debate: Water," on September 28. "Brown said he supports the idea of a peripheral canal to ship more water to Southern California but supports more water conservation. He implied Southern Californians should pay for the new delivery system."

"The beneficiary has to pay, not the general taxpayer," Brown said.

Meg Whitman has been a strong backer of the peripheral canal, the water bond and the gutting of the biological opinions protecting Central Valley salmon and Delta smelt, just like Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has been. She brought up the false dichotomy of "fish versus jobs" during the debate.

"Turning our backs on water is turning our backs on jobs," she stated, failing to acknowledge that keeping more fresh water in the Bay-Delta Estuary helps support the thousands of jobs in the recreational and commercial fishing industries that depend upon healthy salmon and other fish populations.

Whitman also reaffirmed her support for the water bond that will go before the voters in November 2012.

Brown (37%) and Whitman (38%) are locked in a virtual tie among likely voters with 18 percent undecided, according to a survey released on Wednesday, September 29 by the Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC).

Brown's support of a peripheral canal shouldn't really be a surprise, since he supported the canal in 1982 when an initiative approving the canal was overwhelming defeated by the state's voters. Didn't Brown learn from that resounding defeat that a peripheral canal is not popular with the vast majority of the state's voters, whether they're from northern or southern California?