Photo taken by Eric Simons.

Proposition 84, the something-for-everyone “Water Quality, Safety and Supply, Flood Control, Natural Resource Protection and Park Improvements” bond, had garnered about 53 percent of the vote near midnight, with 62 percent of statewide precincts reporting.

If the trend continues, Prop 84 will help support a wide range of water-related programs, with most of the money pouring into the coffers of local and state environmental agencies to hand out as grants.

For the Bay Area, that breaks down something like this:

• $138 million for the state Department of Water Resources to give to groups in the Bay Area “to meet the long term water needs of the state including the delivery of safe drinking water and the protection of water quality and the environment.”
• $275 million for levee and flood control projects in the Delta region, which would also be determined by the DWR.
• $65 million to study flood protection improvements in the Delta, the effects of global warming on the state’s water supply and other water supply projects
• $180 million to the state Fish and Game Department, in consultation with the DWR, for Bay-Delta and coastal fishery restoration projects
• $108 million for the Bay Area Conservancy Program for “protection of beaches, bays and coastal waters and watersheds, including projects to prevent contamination and degradation of coastal waters and watersheds, projects to protect and restore the natural habitat values of coastal waters and lands, and projects and expenditures to promote access and enjoyment of the coastal resources of the state.”

Much of that money has already been tentatively marked for certain areas. The Bay Area Conservancy Program, for example, plans to spend most of its $108 million on a list of high-priority projects: Bair Island (a wetland marsh near Redwood City), the South Bay salt ponds, and the San Francisco Bay Trail, Bay Ridge Trail and Bay Water Trail.

The Conservancy has funded those same projects in the past, with money from two water-quality bonds: Proposition 40, a $2.6 billion bond passed in 2002, and Proposition 50, a $3.4 billion bond passed in 2003.

“With Prop 40, we invested a lot of money in planning for the Ridge Trail, so hopefully with Prop 84 we can make those planning projects come to fruition,” said Abe Doherty, who works on the Ridge Trail project for the Conservancy.

Since 2002, nearly $132 million of Prop 40 and 50 money has been spent in Alameda County, including $72 million for the Cargill Salt Ponds in Hayward and Fremont and nearly $4 million on Bay Loop and Bay Ridge trail projects. The Ridge Trail now has 300 miles of trail ringing the Bay Area, and is especially well-developed in Alameda and San Mateo Counties. The completed trail, Doherty said, would stretch to 545 miles and run through the hills from Morgan Hill to Napa.

The Bay Trail now has 230 miles of completed trail along the shoreline, and has proposed expansions that would extend it north into Napa and Marin and south through Fremont and San Jose.

“When we started getting new money to channel to these projects, they started making tremendous accomplishments,” said Nadine Hitchcock, the manager of the Bay Conservancy Program. “They have been adding miles and miles to their trail systems. It’s very exciting, and the more people can see it coming together the more they are willing to support it.”

Hitchcock said identifying individual projects on the ballot creates a problem of “being too specific,” because it’s too hard to predict when projects will be finished and how much they will end up costing. Instead, she said, it’s better to build up confidence in the agency that distributes the money.

“By leaving it general we have more flexibility to respond to the region’s needs,” she said. “There’s been quite a bit of trust developed with how we’ve used the money in the past. When we first started the program, people were trying to line-item us. Now they’re not doing that anymore.”

Prop 84 drew support from a wide spectrum of politicians, including Republican Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, who campaigned for the measure in a late-October speech outside the Monterey Bay Aquarium. It was also endorsed by the state Chamber of Commerce, both East Bay water districts, and California Trout, an organization dedicated to wild trout issues.

But despite California voters’ affinity for environmental measures, and the celebrity endorsements, a Public Policy Institute poll conducted October 15 showed only 42 percent of likely voters favoring Proposition 84. The high price tag and the measure’s lack of specifics, opponents argued, made it a risky idea.

“This measure should have been titled the ‘Special-Interest-Hidden-Agenda Bond’ because it was placed on the ballot by special interests who don’t really want you to know where all your money is going to be squandered,” wrote State Board of Equalization member Bill Leonard in the ballot argument against Prop 84. “Every special interest that helped get this boondoggle on the ballot will get a share of the taxpayers’ money, but ordinary taxpayers will get nothing from this bond but higher taxes for the next three decades.”

Leonard, a frequent critic of bond measures, opposed all of the bonds on this year’s ballot except 1A, a transportation measure. Because the state would have to pay interest on the bond, the actual cost of Prop 84 would work out to be $10 billion — nearly twice the $5.4 billion in funding it would provide. And if the state can’t come up with the money to pay off the bond, it would have no choice but to raise taxes to do so.

The Bay Conservancy was depending on the proposition to keep itself in the grant-distributing business for a while, since all of the organization’s funding comes from bonds.

“The Coastal Conservancy provides the vast majority of the funding for the ridge trail, and our funding comes from these measures,” he said. “So if we don’t have Prop 84 pass, the rate at which we’re able to fund these projects is going to decrease dramatically.”