Infrastructure bill draws support of California environmentalists, water contractors

A coalition of California lawmakers and stakeholders often at odds declared Tuesday that water, instead of being for fighting, was for friendship.

The group of legislators, water district managers and environmentalists pushed for passage of Senate Bill 872. The bill would take $300 million annually from the state’s greenhouse gas reduction fund for water projects. Half of the dollars would go toward capital improvements for projects affected by subsidence, and the other half would pay for levee repairs.

The legislation has drawn people usually fighting over water to the same side of the negotiating table. One reason is that, absent the improvements, millions of Californians will pay more for water as the infrastructure fails and the resource becomes scarcer, they said.

“You don’t see this every day,” said state Senator Jerry McNerney, a Pleasanton Democrat and the bill’s author. “We’re on the same page on this. There’s an urgency on this.”

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