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landowner, the Chevron Company); and a formal agreement concluded with the Berrenda Mesa Water 

 District and its leading landowner, the Blackwell Land Company, headed in California by Mr. Ronald 

 Khachigian, to promote water marketing by local districts within the service area of the Kern County 

 Water Agency. 



As the decade turned, EDF also became active on water issues with various groups representing big 

 business in California, notably the Bay Area Economic Forum and the California Business Roundtable. 

 During this period, the Bay Area Economic Forum published several studies, on its own and in 

 collaboration with the Metropolitan Water District, which touted the importance of water marketing 

 and water transfers and assessed their benefits and costs. EDF played a consultative role on these 

 studies. Similarly, the Business Roundtable, led by high-ranking executives from, among other 

 corporations, the Bank of America, Wells Fargo Bank, the Transamerica Corporation, Southern 

 California Edison, and the Pacific Gas & Electric Co., published a set of principles which also 

 endorsed water marketing as the touchstone for reform of water resource policy in California. 



All this and much more provided the backdrop for the deliberations that led ultimately to the passage 

 of the Central Valley Project Improvement Act of 1992 (CVPIA). From EDF's point-of-view, llie 

 CVP had for much loo long caused substantial environmental damage, while delivering massive 

 amounts of heavily subsidized water and power. Cost recovery to the federal taxpayers had been 

 minimal, while public environmental resources Vere in precipitous decline. From the point-of-view of 

 various business and urban organizations, the CVP, as the largest water project in California, was the 

 most significant block to a true water market in the state. Indeed, perhaps most important, MWD saw 

 the prohibition of CVP water marketing as a huge obstacle in the way of its obtaining access to the 

 largest single source of water in the State of California, the CVP. For over 50 years, the CVP had 

 been the exclusive province of a select group of contractor beneficiaries, nearly all within the 

 Sacramento and San Joaquin Valleys, serving almost exclusively an agricultural clientele. Delivery of 

 CVP water over the Tehachapi Mountains to Southern California, where three-fifths of the state's 

 residents live, was out of tlie question. 



The stage was thus set for a historic broad-based coalition to form, including not just representatives 

 of environmental groups, big business, and urban water agencies, but Native American groups, 

 waterfowl enthusiasts and duck hunters, sport and commercial fishermen, and family farmers. What 

 resulted was the CVPLA, passed by Congress and signed into law by President George Bush on 

 October 30, 1992. 



With the passage of the CVPIA, the CVP became more environmentally sensitive. It embraced water 

 marketing. And it expanded its basic constituency to include not only its historic beneficiaries but the 

 wide range of interests impacted by the operations of California's largest water project. 



