The Barbara Boxer Water Rebellion

The Democratic Ted Cruz tries to kill a bill that would help parched California.

Barbara Boxer has torpedoed more legislation than she’s helped pass during her four terms in the Senate. Before retiring for good (literally), the Bay Area Democrat is trying to sink a water bill that could provide modest relief to farmers in California’s parched Central Valley.

Congress plans to vote this week on bipartisan legislation that would authorize a variety of water projects including port dredging, reservoirs, fish hatcheries, lake recreation and wetlands restoration. The package also includes $120 million to fix Flint, Michigan’s corroded pipes and other aging municipal water systems.

Yet Ms. Boxer has blown a gasket over a rider inserted by House Republicans and her Democratic colleague Dianne Feinstein that would direct the Departments of Interior and Commerce to operate the pumps in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta at the maximum levels allowed by law. “There is no place for that as long as I am breathing,” Ms. Boxer declared.

After five years of drought, California’s Central Valley is desperate for water. During this year’s El Nino, farmers south of the Delta received a mere 5% of their contractual allocations. A half-million acres of land have been withdrawn from farm production, and groundwater tables are dangerously low. Unemployment exceeds 9% in the Valley.

Yet environmentalists have used the [Delta Smelt decline] as a pretext to reduce water exports from the Delta in hopes of returning the irrigated farmland to its native desert state. The Feinstein rider would give regulators some discretion to increase pumping to a little less than half of capacity, and it authorizes $558 million for water storage, desalination and reclamation.

Ms. Boxer sabotaged a similar compromise two years ago. Piqued at being cut out of negotiations, she has threatened to filibuster any bill that Republicans bring to the floor this week. If she does play the Democratic Ted Cruz, we’ll see how many of her colleagues want to block money for Flint and infrastructure they claim to want.

While the bill could provide short-term relief to farmers, more needs to be done to help arid California. Upon taking office Mr. Trump could declare a public emergency and order regulators to ratchet up pumping while federal agencies redo biological opinions and Republicans in Congress work out a better solution. This would put people back to work, and it might even reduce farm imports from Mexico.

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