Diverse Interests in Riparian Systems and the Potential for Coalition[1]
William M. Kier[2]
Abstract.—The role of state government in flood control project financing is examined, considering the effect of such projects on riparian systems. Changes in state policy, and the unlikely coalition that brought them about, are discussed. The need for comprehensive policy analysis as a foundation for protection of riparian values is emphasized.
Policy Problem
The message of this paper is a simple one: There are public policies, including public investment programs, at work today destroying riparian systems. People concerned with the protection of riparian systems have demonstrated their inability to deal effectively with these policies. There is a demonstrated potential for a coalition to alter these destructive policies. The members of that potential coalition need to understand the problem. The California Riparian Systems Conference has provided a means to further that understanding.
California policy deems it appropriate to spend state general funds on local flood control projects.[3] I do not agree with that policy any more than I agree with the policy that states areas which are subject to being submerged by water are blighted areas and should be redeveloped.[4]
The state's flood control policies were enacted in 1945. The California Legislature had a problem in 1945. It had to decide what to do with an enormous budget surplus which had accumulated during the war. It decided to spend the money on a scatter of capital improvement projects, mostly local government programs. Flood control was one of the lucky winners.
The federal government plans, funds, and constructs local flood control projects, primarily through the US Army Corps of Engineers (CE) and the USDA Soil Conservation Service (SCS). Long ago, and far from California, the CE was embarrassed by local politicians profiteering by selling land to public agencies for flood control projects. The CE and the US Congress adopted a policy requiring the local sponsors of flood control projects to provide the necessary lands, easements, and rights-of-way necessary for its flood control projects. California's 1945 policy relieved local taxpayers of that burden and placed it, instead, on state taxpayers, arguing, in effect, that the people of Redding have a stake in the flood-proofing of Palm Springs.
The Redding-Palm Springs connection made sense, in a convoluted way. The greatest flood control needs in 1945 were those of the burgeoning urban communities, particularly in and around Los Angeles. As Los Angeles' needs were met from the new state program, there would be funds for the next burgeoning area, and the next. Eventually, there would be money for Redding—Redding need only be patient.
As it turned out, however, the problems of Los Angeles in 1949 and Redding in 1969 were different. Those communities which grew earlier did so under lax development rules. Floods did considerable damage to homes and businesses; those earlier projects were largely for the purpose of preventing further damage.
As state flood control funds became available to the smaller communities—desert and seashore resorts and the growth areas of the Central Valley and foothills—the project purpose was increasingly stated in terms of making land floodproof to enable future development, rather than safeguarding existing development from further flood damage. This "land enhancement" flood control project purpose had the misfortune of making
its first major appearances at the dawning of the "Environmental Decade," thus setting the stage for a riparian conservation-fiscal conservatism coalition—which had a feeble, but fruitful, life between 1969 and 1975.
Defining the Issue
Three local flood control projects with major land enhancement benefits were reviewed by the California Resources Agency and its constituent departments in 1965 and 1966. Of these, the Jack and Simmerly Sloughs project, on lands north of Marysville, was found most objectionable by the Resources Agency, due to the loss of waterfowl habitat projected by the Department of Fish and Game (DFG).
In an unprecedented move, the California Secretary for Resources officially informed the CE that because the land enhancement benefits figured so heavily in the project justification, it would not be appropriate to use state funds for the purchase of lands, easements, and rights-of-way for the Jack Slough project. The Secretary did so only after consultation with the State Senator who represented Yuba County. That senator indicated privately that he understood the equity issue involved and would ask for a policy review of the state's role in flood control project financing.
A report prepared jointly by the Department of Water Resources (DWR), Department of Finance, and the Reclamation Board (RB) was submitted to the Legislature in December 1966, just as the "Pat" Brown administration was giving way to the Reagan Administration. That report noted that California was the only state in the nation which provided 100% of the non-federal costs of local flood control projects and recommended the policy be changed to require that an appropriate share of those costs come from local governments or landowner beneficiaries. In a minority report, the RB repudiated the main report's finding that unjust enrichment could result from local flood control projects and argued against the recommendation that the local interests share in the land, easement, and right-of-way costs.
At this point, it should be spelled out what has always seemed obvious, but may not in fact be. That is, during the years the 1945 policy applied, there was virtually no way local officials could say no to a local flood control project. It did not cost them a cent and it made developers and other boosters happy. The planning was done—and still is done—by the federal agencies. The California Legislature authorizes each project for state assistance. The local agency proceeds to buy the necessary lands, relocate railroads and pipelines, raise street and highway bridges, periodically billing the DWR for reimbursement. When the project is completed, local government planners and developers attack what was once a riparian system and produce residential, commercial, and industrial properties which, in turn, produce the tax revenues necessary to maintain and operate the flood control project.
What seemed equally obvious, therefore, was that any substantive local government front-end cost, any earnest money, would cause enough discomfort that community leaders might first ask any of several pertinent questions, including: "Is this the best use of our scarce fiscal resources?", or even, "Is this the best use for this floodplain land?" It was this tiny bit of responsible question-asking that some have sought through legislation.
There was no interest in the report in the Legislature in 1967. The new Director of Water Resources disagreed with his predecessor's recommendations; flood control expenditures were the furthest thing from the new Department of Finance Director's mind. Conservationists, to the extent they existed at all in Sacramento, were blissfully ignorant of the report and its implications for riparian systems.
One spark remained, however. One person who had been involved in the review of those less-than-urgent projects—and troubled by their potential for destroying riparian systems—remained close to the policy buttons and levers.
Coalition Development and Performance
In March, 1969, Sacramento County's fast-growing environmentalist community was seized with paroxysms of rage and indignation at news that a politically connected builder would undertake a satellite community development on the floodplain of Morrison Creek, 24 km. (15 mi.) south of the Capitol—and that the flood problems which had endowed the area with a remarkable oak forest and a rich fauna would be addressed through the Morrison Creek Stream Group Project, courtesy of the CE. Here was the fuel to which the spark should be applied.
Senate Bill 1018 was introduced on 8 April, 1969, by Senator Robert Lagomarsino, Chairman of the Senate Natural Resources Committee. Lagomarsino, a conservative from Ventura County, was willing to at least ask whether it was proper to spend state general funds to pave the way for a Sacramento County developer who, as far as anyone could tell, directed campaign funds largely to Democrats. Because of the local news angle, the bill, which would have withheld state assistance to the extent any project was justified by land enhancement, enjoyed wide publicity—that is, in the SacramentoBee's circulation area. Beyond that, the bill was known only—and loathed—by county and district flood control engineers.
It was the best of years and the worst of years. The bill was opposed by the DWR, ignored by the Sierra Club, and, somehow, adopted by the Senate in its original form—only to die a lingering death in the Assembly Water Committee at
the hands of the County Supervisors' Association's water and flood control committee lobbyists.
To his great credit, Senator Lagomarsino reintroduced the bill each year, which provided adequate opportunity to pit the Finance Director against the Water Resources Director. The fiscal conservatism of the Reagan Administration finally prevailed. Governor Reagan announced he would seek no funds for new state commitments to local flood control projects until the Legislature had sent him a policy which adequately recognized the local interest in these projects.
The bill succeeded, finally, in 1973. It had been watered down, of course, but a bit of its original spirit still showed through. The important thing is that the Water Code was amended to require a slight local cost-sharing for lands, easements, and rights-of-way, and, as predicted, the new policy had a chilling effect on local flood control projects.
This would be a swell little story, even somewhat instructive about coalition potentials, but it does not end there. In June 1978, California voters approved Proposition 13 and cut their property taxes in half. In January 1979, Senator Alfred Alquist of Santa Clara County introduced Senate bill 139, a bill to repeal the 1973 amendments to the flood control assistance statutes; that is, to restore the 1945 full state funding policy.
Senator Alquist's bill was completely appropriate. His flood control district had lost property tax income, and the state cost-sharing policy only added to the district's problems. What was not appropriate was the response from our conservation/conservative coalition. There was none. The bill cleared the first committee without dissent and the Senate floor without a discouraging word. The DFG, at that time in the midst of its riparian systems survey, did not know the bill existed.
One lone conservationist took it on himself to pester the DWR until it sluggishly advised the author of of the bill of its opposition. Slowly, ever so slowly, DWR—not DFG—alerted Assembly Water Committee members to its problems with SB 139.
Senator Alquist was fighting an uphill battle. Key tax-cutting legislators had taken stances againt further state bail-outs of troubled local government programs. Local government should tighten its belt in the spirit of Proposition 13. Thirteen months after its introduction, SB 139 was narrowly defeated in the Assembly policy committee—not by friends of riparian systems, but by champions of "cut, squeeze and trim."
Conclusion
That, then, is the story: a story about a 1945 policy that was entirely appropriate for the protection of California's burgeoning communities and entirely inappropriate for the protection of California's threatened riparian systems. We have learned how that policy came under attack by a strange alliance of resource conservation and fiscal conservative interests—and just how ephemeral that coalition proved to be.
We may even have noted how the right hand of state government was blithely out surveying riparian systems—one supposes because they have value—while the left hand was ready once more to smite them with renewed flood control subsidies.
It is not enough, then, to understand riparian systems, nor to share that understanding with others that they may also appreciate the value of such systems. If these systems have value, that value must not only be stated explicitly in public policy, but all the little policies and public practices which implicitly contravene positive policy must be dealt with as well. What is the sense of government saying on the one hand: "Riparian systems are valuable," and on the other: "Here's a permit and $10 million in tax receipts—go obliterate a riparian system"?
The agenda developed by the California Riparian Systems Conference must include a sophisticated analysis of laws and regulations affecting riparian systems and determination of which of them work against the protection of these systems. Then, I would suggest, look to the fiscal conservatives for coalition building. The conservation lobbies may figure out what their stake in your campaign is—but it will be late in the day when they finally do.