From Senator Wolk’s office, this press release:
Senator Lois Wolk (D-Davis) today introduced a $5.6 billion water bond to provide funding for broadly supported projects to address the state’s urgent water needs.
“SB 42 is a fresh approach to this bond discussion. It focuses on funding the most effective, broadly supported projects that will meet the state’s most urgent water needs. At roughly half the amount of the $11.14 billion water bond currently slated for the 2014 ballot, this proposal is much more realistic,” said Wolk, Chair of Senate Governance and Finance Committee and the Select Committee on Delta Stewardship and Sustainability Committee.
Wolk’s Senate Bill 42, “The Safe Drinking Water, Water Quality & Flood Protection Act of 2014,” provides funding for projects that provide safe drinking water to those Californians that still do not have access to this basic service, improve water supply reliability while decreasing demand on California’s most stressed watershed, advance community support ecosystem restoration, and levee improvements in the Delta.
The projects funded by the bond will benefit all regions of the state. Specifically, SB 42 addresses needs for the following:
- regional water supply development around the state;
- safe and clean drinking water;
- Delta community-supported ecosystem restoration and levee enhancement in the Delta;
- funding for watershed and ecosystem projects around the state;
- support for development of groundwater and surface water storage to the extent that those facilities will provide public benefits; and
- flood protection in the Central Valley
“SB 42 will address the needs of the more than 2 million Californians who don’t have access to clean drinking water, and the more than 1 million Californians who are not adequately protected from catastrophic flood risk, while at the same time addressing the crisis in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, the heart of the state’s water system, a fertile agricultural region, and the largest estuary in the Western hemisphere,” said Wolk, who represents four of the five counties in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. “This is a bond I believe my colleagues and voters can support.”
FOR MORE INFORMATION:
- Click here for summary of SB 42.
- Click here for a fact sheet on SB 42.
