Californians say the state's water supply system has serious problems that require improvement, but they are unwilling to spend billions of dollars in ratepayer and taxpayer funds on the task, according to a new USC Dornsife/Los Angeles Times poll.
The results suggest an uphill fight for proponents of a state water bond and for a proposal to replumb the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, the transfer point for Northern California supplies delivered to the San Joaquin Valley and urban Southern California.
Reluctance to pay for big public works projects was reflected throughout the survey, which also questioned voters on the California prison system and the high-speed rail project.
"On all three of these issues voters have very clear concerns and want to see something done — until they see the price tag," said Dan Schnur, director of USC's Jesse M. Unruh Institute of Politics.
In initial questioning, 60% of those polled said they would favor a bond to finance statewide water improvements such as levee repair and groundwater cleanup. But when told the bond would require the state to borrow $5 billion to $6 billion, support plunged to 36%.
Slightly more than half, 51%, of those surveyed said they favored the delta proposal — until they learned it would cost $25 billion in ratepayer and government funds. Then only 36% said they would support it.
Pollsters said the flip in support demonstrated two things: Voters continue to have serious pocketbook concerns as the state crawls out of recession, and most Californians don't think the state's water problems are urgent.
"You turn on your faucet and the water comes out. They don't see an immediate problem," said David Kanevsky of American Viewpoint, the Republican half of a bipartisan pair of polling firms that conducted the survey for the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences and the Los Angeles Times.
A statewide vote on the water bond, which was originally set at $11 billion, has been postponed several times as legislators whittle down the amount and wait for the economy to improve. They are still drafting the latest version, which is scheduled to go on the ballot next year and is expected to be about half its initial size.
The delta proposal, backed by Gov. Jerry Brown's administration, is for a smaller, subterranean version of the peripheral canal that voters quashed in 1982. It calls for the long-term restoration of more than 100,000 acres of delta habitat and construction of a new, north delta diversion point on the Sacramento River that would feed two 30-mile tunnels carrying water to existing export facilities in the south delta.
San Joaquin Valley irrigation districts and the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California say the project is necessary to halt cuts in water deliveries that have been imposed to protect imperiled native fish in the delta. More
