California Trout * Earth View Environmental Computing
Education for Sustainable Living
ENACT * League of Women Voters
Los Angeles Water Conservation Council * Mono Lake Committee
Public Officials for Water & Environmental Reform (POWER)
Pueblo of San Diego Watershed * Sierra Club

27 October, 1998

Honorable Bruce Babbitt
Secretary of Interior
Washington, D.C.

Dear Mr. Secretary,

The meeting you held with Southern California groups Wednesday afternoon to discuss CalFed was helpful to all of us. Individuals may follow-up with you directly, but some of us wanted to summarize our messages and invite you and Felicia Marcus to return to see for yourselves what is possible.

Summary:

• We in Southern California are eager to help solve the Bay-Delta problems, particularly those related to water supply reliability, drinking and storm water quality, and salinity. At the same time our proposals will address other equally vexing problems like community building, flood control, inner city jobs, air quality, and global warming, among others.

• An integrated approach to water in Southern California and statewide is compelling. On the other hand, CalFed's options that lock in deliveries of water contracts that cannot be done without massive new facilities is frightening. We are committed as a group and individually to working with stakeholders throughout the state to develop data and projects that will increase everyone's confidence that we can have long term economic productivity, while restoring the Bay-Delta ecosystem.

• We believe that so far the CalFed process has produced a range of options that are inadequate to address either California's current water problems or the needs of the future. Our involvement can help you turn a CalFed plan away from a one that locks in the status quo to one that will "develop" water supplies through new, but tested and economically responsible ideas for conservation, watershed and groundwater management, and water reuse.

• We will tackle the drinking and storm water quality and salinity problems, but most of what needs to be done must be done locally in Southern California and outside the State Water Project system. Some of us are meeting regularly with staff and Board members of the Metropolitan Water District to explore regional and statewide strategies to address these and other issues.

• Many of the groups to whom you talk regularly believe they benefit from no change in water allocations and water use. Let us introduce you to the much larger group of citizens that will benefit from changes. Our experience with conservation in Southern California also leads us to think that those most committed to the status quo will adapt and even prosper from the projects we are suggesting.

• As a group and individually, we can help you and the next Governor strengthen the CalFed process. Anything less, we believe, will fail all the parties.

Since you will be in California many times before the end of the year, we invite you to come back to Southern California, and we will arrange visits to some of the projects and programs that we described in our meeting. We represent only the tip of the creativity that is at work in this region, and we know there are many in other regions who can offer similar, cost-effective, integrated solutions that will truly meet the needs of the future.

Thank you for inviting us to meet with you. Your warm response to us at the meeting was welcomed, and we will seek advice from your and EPA's staff about how best to insert our ideas into the CalFed process.

We look forward to hearing from you soon.

Frances Spivy-Weber   Mono Lake Committee   228 1/2 So. Juanita Ave.    Redondo Beach, CA 90277 310-316-0041/8509	Dorothy Green POWER	John D. Sullivan, PhD ENACT League of Women Voters
Nick Di Croce Board of Governors California Trout, Inc.	Bong Hwan Kim Los Angeles Water Conservation Council
Jeff Wallace EarthView Environmental Computing	Jim Blomquist Senior Southern California Representative Sierra Club
Fred Cagle PA Pueblo of San Diego Watershed	Elden Hughes Sierra Club Whittier	Herley Jim Bowling Education for Sustainable Living
Conner Everts POWER

 

Cc:	Felicia Marcus Regional Administrator EPA Region IX	David Freeman General Manager LADWP	Judy Abdo Tim Brick MWD Board of Directors
	Mary Nichols Environment Now	Susan Munves City of Santa Monica	Martha Davis Californians and the Land
	David Cobb Global Stratagem	Robert Wilkinson Santa Barbara

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