Money & Politics, Environment | Daily Report

Did the Obama administration swap the fate of the Delta’s endangered salmon for a couple of votes for the president’s health care overhaul?

Probably, says the Republican National Committee.

Rep. Dennis Cardoza, D-Merced

A preposterous smear, says one of the Central Valley Democrats accused of flipping his vote on health care in exchange for more irrigation water for agribusiness.

California’s water wars sloshed over into the political calculus regarding health care via the GOP’s Code Red Web site.

Code Red exists to “stop the Obama/Pelosi government health care takeover.” It’s been doing daily vote counts to track how the measure is faring as it heads to a House showdown, perhaps this weekend.

On Wednesday, Code Red moved Reps. Dennis Cardoza, D-Merced, and Jim Costa, D-Fresno, from “undecided’ to “yes” on the health care measure.

Only the day before, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar had increased water allotments from the Central Valley Project to the big growers who have been noisily clamoring for more water during three years of drought.

“Was this an apparent backroom deal?" the National Republican Congressional Committee asked. “Will Cardoza and Costa come clean?”

At the least, the Republicans were noting a fault line among California’s congressional Democrats in an extraordinarily difficult environmental and economic dispute.

As the drought worsened, the government has repeatedly cut back water for growers. That deepened the hurt in the valley’s recession-battered agricultural economy.

Meanwhile, water diversions were cut back still further because scientists said more water was desperately needed to save the Chinook salmon from extinction.

Eight years ago, 800,000 salmon were counted swimming up the Sacramento River. Last fall, the salmon run was down to 40,000, and the North Coast’s fishing industry was in ruins. Over-pumping is the culprit, environmentalists say.

Starting last summer, agriculture interests, including billionaire mega-donor Stewart Resnick, owner of Kern County’s giant Paramount Farms, began badgering the administration to ignore the environmental issues and increase water allotments. Republicans urged them on.

But with only a handful of exceptions, Democrats in the California delegation sided against the growers, and with the environmentalists and the fishing industry.

On the senate side, the big exception was Sen. Dianne Feinstein, who emerged as a high-profile advocate for the growers. In the House, Cardoza and Costa, broke with other California Democrats on the issue. 

In his announcement, Interior Secretary Salazar said the increased water allotments were possible because the drought has finally broken. But to the GOP, the timing was suspicious – and that was all it took to brand the two Democrats as sellouts.

Costa didn’t make public response. Cardoza said yesterday that the accusation didn’t make any sense. For one thing, he said he wasn’t happy with the new water allocations – growers need much more water than they've promised, he claims. For another, he hasn’t read the new version of the health care reform bill – how could he have switched his vote?

“This accusation is absolutely false and nothing more than an election-year smear tactic," Cardoza said.