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How Governor Edmund G. Brown, Sr., Won Financing Approval for the SWP When Governor Brown took office in 1958, he was convinced that California's growth depended on developing new water resources. According to Norris Hundley in "The Great Thirst," that vision dictated passage of legislation to fund the SWP. Hundley says Governor Brown was an activist and won over needed legislators by granting two major concessions. Those were the Davis-Grunsky Act with money for local projects mainly in the North and an amendment in the bill that stipulated the water contracts could not be changed by the Legislature as long as the bonds were outstanding. Many others credit Governor Brown with the passage of the Burns-Porter Act. DWR Director Ron Robie said at a 1999 SWP history seminar that it was Brown’s "large commitment and strong leadership, which gave water a high priority" in California's infrastructure. Governor Brown and then-DWR Director Harvey O. Banks campaigned tenaciously for the act and against antagonists who disparaged the passage of the State's largest bond issue at the time. To honor their leadership, major SWP facilities bear their names: Governor Edmund G. Brown California Aqueduct and the Harvey O. Banks Delta Pumping Plant. |
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