The first order of business in the new legislative session is to sort through two-year bills. After coming up short on votes, lawmakers had parked about 120 bills last year to return to in the next session. They now have until the end of next week to curry more votes or amend those bills to ease opposition and get them out of committee.
Farm and water interests will be closely watching two of those bills. Assembly Bill 460 by Assemblymember Rebecca Bauer-Kahan of Orinda would increase penalties for illegal water diversions. According to Alexandra Biering, a water policy advocate at the California Farm Bureau, the bill would remove judicial review and allow no opportunity for judicial process.
The bill stems from a high-profile incident in 2022 that fueled calls to overhaul the state’s water rights system. Biering told members at the annual farm bureau meeting recently that about 300 trade groups and organizations banded together in response and devoted “an inordinate amount of time” to dealing with the fallout.
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AB 1337 by Asm. Buffy Wicks of Oakland also proposes to increase penalties and would grant the State Water Resources Control Board the full authority to curtail water rights in every watershed, even in normal and wet years, and with little oversight.
“The water board is a political animal like anything else,” warned Biering.
These lawmakers could take a lesson from Senator Ben Allen of Santa Monica, who authored a measure last year taking aim at senior water rights. He eventually amended the measure to instead clarify the water board’s powers with investigating water rights, which led farm groups to drop their opposition and go neutral on the bill. Gov. Gavin Newsom later signed it into law.
