Claims Made in the Ballot Pamphlet

  • Proposition One wrongly focuses on building more dams.  This will increase pressure to divert more water from the Trinity, Klamath, and Sacramento rivers. This places them at great risk at a time when severe and prolonged drought has significantly reduced existing snowpacks.
  • New dams will not produce new water. All the best dam sites have already been developed. These dams will not even be useable for decades.
  • It would be a historic departure to pay for dams from the state General Fund. California cannot afford the additional debt.
  • Storage money will not be available for Central and North Coast regions. Instead, it will benefit “a limited geography in the state, mainly the San Joaquin and Sacramento Valleys and Southern California.”
  • Proposition One should focus on improving water use efficiency, fixing our existing water system, and cleaning up groundwater.

Claims Made in Opinion Editorials

  • Borrowing more money won’t make it rain. Proposition One is an “unconscionable money grab” to protect “water-sucking corporate agriculture at the expense of hard-working taxpayers.”
  • Proposition One provides no funding to improve water use efficiency, prevent the depletion of groundwater, or repair aging municipal water and sewer systems.
  • The $1.5 billion that Proposition One would provide to California’s major public conservancies is “pork spending.” Proposition One “forces taxpayers to buy water the public already owns to protect fish.” And the idea that we would build dams to benefit fish is “ludicrous.”
  • Proposition One misspends the money we should be using to fix leaky local water pipes.