Friends, I’ll likely do a number of posts on the Little Hoover Commission’s proposal for a new structure for state-level water governance. However, I can’t bring myself to summarize the whole report. I am just going to have to hope that you are the junkies I think you are, and that you’ve read at least the Executive Summary.
Resources: The Executive Summary. The full report. Links to the testimony they listened to. Aquafornia gathering the news stories on the report.
The purpose of their proposed new governance structure:
From the Executive Summary, it seems like the purpose of their proposed structure is to remove existing barriers to implementing the big water legislation from 2009. The LHC wants a governance structure that “address[es] the supply challenges ahead while supporting [California’s] environment, accommodating its population growth and ensuring the conditions that allow its economy to thrive.” (pg i)
From the Introduction to the full report, the purpose of the proposed structure is to “allow the state to determine its water future on its own, by managing its water assets and planning for its future needs, rather than running the risk of having conditions imposed on the state from the outside that might fail to serve California’s longterm needs.” (pg 2) I gather from the paragraph that precedes that line that the LHC doesn’t want the projects to be jerked around by the federal district courts enforcing the ESA anymore. That’s reasonable.
If I were a good blogger, I’d be thinking about whether their proposed structure will give the state ways to meet those goals. But what you’re more likely to get out of me in the next few posts is commentary on whatever caught my eye enough to write a few hundred words. Let’s do it…
(Oh, and y’all could ask me questions and stuff in the comments, if you want my take (worth exactly what you pay for it) on any particular aspect of the report. I mean, I’ve read it now, and that kind of effort shouldn’t go to waste.)
On the public record 
I know it’s the LHC’s job to look at stuff like this, and maybe they’ve got a point — state government has structural issues that negatively impact how well it does the job of managing water, to go along with the structural issues that negatively impact how well we manage every other damn thing.
But damn, the solution is to change the organizational flow chart a little? Really? Faced with chronic and epic supply and distribution issues that are likely to just get worse and worse until we face an entirely predictable crisis, that’s the best answer we’ve got?
It makes me wish we had elected a leader who was dedicated to just blowing up the boxes…. oh, wait.