California water plan aims change Gold Rush thinking

By Peter Henderson

OAKLAND, California (Reuters) - California legislators on Wednesday struck a truce in their water wars that could set off the biggest spending spree on water in half a century and aims to satisfy environmentalists, unemployed farmers and the cities of Los Angeles and San Francisco.

The theme of the package is that human and environmental uses of water are equal priorities.

But critics, including the environmental group the Sierra Club, have called the bills and an $11 billion bond a pricey sham that left a new council to govern the largest estuary on the West Coast without funding or power. They said it would spark more fighting.

The most populous U.S. state is also one of the driest with high demand for water from rice farms and fruit and vegetable crops to Silicon Valley microchip plants.

Court fights over keeping water in streams for declining fish populations and three years of drought have exacerbated tensions in the state, which frequently teeters on the edge of financial crisis and resorted to handing out IOUs this year during another budget crunch.

There is no guarantee that voters will approve the $11 billion bond passed by the legislature.

From its car pollution standards to its climate change agenda, California is an environmental leader but lags much of the world in water. New conservation rules may change that.

Measures include monitoring ground water, requiring 20 percent urban conservation by 2020 and setting up a council to run the Sacramento Delta estuary, the biggest wetlands on the West Coast and a water supply for most of the state.