When public leadership fails, as it has in the development of new water supply and additional flood protection for a rapidly growing state, it is up to the public to assume the leadership role and that is what the initiative process is all about.
Voters may get last word on dams
Bond proposal could also include peripheral canal
By Hank Shaw
December 15, 2007
Capitol Bureau Chief
SACRAMENTO - The political campaign over whether to build new dams has finally broken out from under the dome of the Capitol and into the woolly world of the ballot initiative.
Backers of a bond that would build new dams and possibly a peripheral canal around the Delta have submitted four versions of their proposals to the attorney general, the first step to circulating it in preparation for a November ballot fight.
Bankrolled by the California Chamber of Commerce, the California Farm Bureau Federation, Western Growers and the Building Industry Association, the proposals are all taken from ideas contained within legislation pushed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sen. Dave Cogdill, R-Modesto.
Cogdill's political neighbor, Sen. Michael Machado, D-Linden, is a chief backer of a competing bond proposal that was cleared for signature-gathering this week.
Machado, along with Senate President Pro Tem Don Perata and a bevy of environmental and conservation groups, held a news conference Thursday to pick up the gauntlet the chamber's bond proposal threw down.
"It's treacherous, it's ill-advised and it will be defeated," Perata said of the dam bond.
He said that their coalition has decided for now not to pursue its competing bond proposal, which emphasizes underground water storage and the cleanup of polluted underground aquifers.
"My intention is to defeat a bad bond, not explain why one initiative is better than another," Perata said.
"That'd be just great - to end up with one bond that has the support of the governor and Sen. Dianne Feinstein? That's great," Cogdill said. "Our fear was two (bonds) on the ballot. I think it's a mistake on their part."
Cogdill, who has been working on the bond all year, says they're going to the ballot because they are losing hope that the Democrats who control the Legislature will ever allow money for a new dam.
