What these efforts have in common is that they emphasize the need for cooperation and open dialogue. The California water wars are over, and now there is consensus that endless argument does less to protect California's most important environmental asset than concentrated negotiation.

In December 1994, an historic state/federal agreement on Bay-Delta environmental protection was signed. The Bay-Delta Accord was declared a major victory of consensus over confrontation by the Governor, the U.S. Secretary of the Interior, and the Administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Standards were set that could be supported by the federal and state government and that allow for the eventual return to the State of primary control over Bay-Delta water management.

The Bay-Delta Accord provided for the implementation and financing of Category III measures to address non-flow factors as part of a comprehensive ecosystem protection plan for the San Francisco Bay/Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta Estuary. Category III measures address habitat conditions related to the following: unscreened water diversions; discharge of pollutants; over-fishing; illegal fishing (poaching); land-derived salts; exotic species; barriers to fish passage; riparian, wetland, and estuarine habitat; channel alterations; and local land-use modifications.

These issues will also be addressed at part of the larger CALFED process. The CALFED Bay-Delta Program is a collaborative state-federal effort to develop a long-term solution to ecosystem and water supply problems in the Bay-Delta. The Program was spawned by a framework agreement signed in June 1994 by 10 state and federal agencies with management and regulatory responsibility in the Bay-Delta. The framework agreement committed the state and federal agencies to work together in areas of Bay-Delta management including water quality standards formulation, coordination of State Water Project and Central Valley Project operations with regulatory requirements, and long-term solutions to problems in the Bay-Delta Estuary.

Seeking to fund some initial steps towards a long-term solution, the Governor and the Legislature passed Senate Bill 900 which placed Proposition 204 on the November 1996 ballot. Proposition 204 would provide $235 million for clean water and water recycling projects in communities throughout California. It would supply an additional $600 million for improving the health of the Sacramento/San Joaquin Bay- Delta ecosystem, a region which provides 20 million Californians with drinking water. The remaining $120 million would fund projects designed to ensure water reliability, such as replenishing CaliforniaÃs groundwater basins.