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TUESDAY, MARCH 31, 2015 SERVING THE COACHELLA VALLEY SINCE 1927

California’s water infrastructure is incrisis, and even billions of dollars in statefunding won’t be nearly enough to solvethe problem, local and national waterleaders said at a conference in IndianWells on Monday.

Former Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.)and longtime Sacramento Bee columnistDan Walters headlined the event, whichwas hosted by the California Utility Ex-ecutive Management Association, a non-profit that supports water utility offi-cials. Surrounded by the lush landscap-ing of the Renaissance Indian Wells Re-sort & Spa — and the resort’s 36-hole golffacility — they bemoaned the fact thatthe United States doesn’t dedicate moremoney to water infrastructure.

“When I was on Appropriations, Iwatched a substantial amount of road-building going on in Afghanistan and

Billionsspent toalleviatedroughtStill not enough for a permanent solutionBy Sammy RothThe Desert Sun

Please see DROUGHT, 5A

INDIANA CEOs WANT CHANGES TO ‘RELIGIOUS FREEDOM’ LAW PAGE 1B

Valley house withBrangelina tiesup for saleCOACHELLA VALLEY, 3A

Coyote Stageworksback with ‘Buyerand Cellar’A&E VALLEY, 12A

Rotary tourneyteams looking formore than a titleSPORTS, 1C

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For the first time in a century, endan-gered Sierra Nevada bighorn sheep areback on their ancestral range and headedtoward recovery, wildlife officials saidMonday.CALIFORNIA, 7A

Bighorn sheep relocated Bighorn sheepare beingreleased intoYosemiteNational Park’sback-country aspart of amultiagencyoperation.

AP

An audit released by the Anti-Defa-mation League has found that anti-Se-mitic incidents rose by 21percent acrossthe U.S. and by 29 percent in Californialast year.

The report, released Monday, foundthat 912 incidents of assault, vandalismand harassment took place nationwide in2014, compared to only 751 in 2013.

California saw the highest increase,with 184 incidents recorded in 2014 com-pared to 143 in 2013.

Though the total number of anti-Se-mitic acts is one of the lowest reportedby the ADL since it started keeping rec-ords in 1979, it’s the first time in nearly adecade that the number of incidents hasrisen significantly.

“Over the years in trends we’ve seen ageneral decline from generation to gen-eration, but we have occasionally seenspikes in activity in any one of thoseyears. This was one of those years,” saidAmanda Susskind, ADL’s Pacific South-west regional director.

Report:Anti-Semiticincidentsrose in 2014By Tatiana SanchezThe Desert Sun

APA report by the Anti-Defamation Leaguefound that anti-Semitic acts increased by 21percent nationwide in 2014. In this photo,young Jewish people from Israel and othercountries march in silence between the twoparts of Auschwitz-Birkenau, the NaziGerman death camp, in an annual march ofthe living in Oswiecim, Poland, in 2014.

Please see ANTI-SEMITISM, 4A

When the ANA Inspiration returns to Mission HillsCountry Club in Rancho Mirage this week, it willwrite a new chapter in a story that is closelyaligned with breakthroughs in the history of

women and sports.The tournament launched in 1972, the same year that Ti-

tle IX passed to prohibit sex discrimination in education andcreate more opportunities for girls and women in class-rooms and on the playing fields.

And from the start, the tournament that debuted as theColgate-Dinah Shore Winners Circle set a new standard byoffering a record $110,000 purse, the first six-figure purse inLPGA history.

It came at a time when women began pushing hard forequal rights as well as equal pay for equal work. In theseyears, women working full-time, year-round in the U.S.earned around 59 cents for every dollar earned by men.

Professional female athletes fared even worse, laggingwoefully behind their male counterparts who sometimesearned more than eight times the prize money in any giventournament.

Dinah Shore, the popular actress, singer and talk-show

hostess who helped launch the tourna-ment, saw the long-term impact itcould have on professional women’ssports.

“I’m all for equal pay for equalplay,” Shore said during a 1972 inter-view.

“We hope, in years to come, thatthis tournament will have the distinc-tion accorded to the Masters formen.”

Female golfers weren’t alone intheir convictions.

In 1970, Billie Jean King and eightother players— dubbed the “Original 9” — rebelled againstthe U.S. Lawn Tennis Association for the inequity in prizemoney between men and women players. The women set uptheir own tour of eight tournaments, with Virginia Slims assponsor.

By 1971, 40 players joined the Virginia Slims Circuit and

Women’s golf tourney helpedusher in era of equality

DESERT SUN FILE PHOTOFrom left, former President Gerald Ford, actress Dinah Shore, golfer Judy Rankin and Colgate-Palmolive president David Foster are picturedduring a Colgate Dinah-Shore Winners Circle tournament, held in the late 1970s at Mission Hills Country Club in Rancho Mirage.

DeniseGoolsbyTHESTORYTELLER

Please see GOLF, 5A

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the prize money dramat-ically increased. The“Original 9” paved theway for the establishmentof the Women’s Tennis As-sociation, which wasformed in 1973.

During the same year,the U.S. Open offeredequal prize money to bothmen and women for thefirst time.

Rosie Casals of PalmDesert — a member of theInternational Tennis Hallof Fame and one of the“Original 9” — won thefirst Virginia Slims tour-nament.

“It was the movement— the whole movement ofwomen’s lib, women’sequality. The whole cam-paign began to develop,”Casals told The DesertSun.

The stage was set forthe women of the LPGA totake their own leap to-wards pay parity.

Enter Colgate-Palm-olive President DavidFoster, who with Shorelaunched a tournament

that set the bar for futuretour sponsors.

The record-breaking$110,000 purse in 1972 —including a first placeprize of $20,050 — wassignificantly larger thanthe second-largest purseat the time, which was the$85,000 offered at theSears Women’s WorldClassic in Florida.

The average first placepurse that year was$4,600.

“Our company recog-nizes the fact that womenhave reached equalitywith men on the golfcourse as well as in othersocial and professionalareas,” Foster said in a1972 story in the ProgressBulletin (Pomona).

“It is our privilege, aswell as our pleasure, to beable to provide this majorchampionship tourney,which in every respectwill be on a par with thevery best of the men’stournaments,”

Foster sought to tapinto the demographic thatpurchased household sup-plies for the family, in-cluding his company’sColgate toothpaste, Palm-olive dishwashing liquid

and Irish Spring soap.He also wanted a plat-

form to speak directly tothese decision-makers.

He decided a women’sprofessional golf tourna-ment could be the perfectfit, if he found the right lo-cation. And he wanted toposition the tournamentto be played the week be-fore the Masters.

After failing to find avenue in Florida, heturned to the desert andstruck a deal with MissionHills Country Club in Ran-cho Mirage, which waslooking for exposure forits new condominiums.

While the country clubhad land available for agolf course, it needed fi-nancial help to get onebuilt. Colgate-Palmoliveended up covering thecost of constructing theDesmond Muirhead-de-signed course.

At the time, Shore washosting “Dinah’s Place,” adaytime television pro-gram, primarily spon-sored by Colgate-Palm-olive. When Foster ap-proached Shore abouthosting a golf tourna-ment, she actuallythought it was a tennis

tournament, because shewas an accomplishedplayer on the court.

But she immediatelywent to work on her golfgame, taking lessons fromTerry Wilcox, who was di-rector of golf at the coun-try club. Wilcox laterwent on serve as the tour-nament director, from1994 until 2008.

In 1972, Shore talked toThe Desert Sun about herefforts to get her game upto, well, par.

“It’s a challenge and athrill to do five good TVshows a week, but rightnow I’m concerned withan even greater challenge— getting my handicapdown so I can play in myown tournament,” shesaid at the time.

Although women weremaking great strides in

the 1970s, tournament of-ficials and news reportscontinued to use sexist de-scriptions of the athletes,commenting on theirlooks as well as theirprowess.

One media report de-scribed the 1972 tourna-ment as “the richest girlygolf tournament of alltime.” A 1976 tournamentnews release noted that“Attractive MarleneHagge scored one of twoholes-in-one at last year’sColgate-Dinah Shore Win-ners Circle.”

And one reporter com-mented on Judy Rankin’s“weight problem” whendiscussing her inability toadd pounds to her frame.

Jane Blalock won thefirst Colgate-Dinah ShoreWinners Circle, shootinga 3-under-par 213 over 54

holes. That same year,Sandra Post knocked inthe tournament’s firsthole-in-one.

With Shore as the faceof the tournament, theevent would grow in stat-ure and prestige.

Foster announced in afull page Desert Sun ad,written as a letter to thecommunity, that the tour-nament would not be aone-time event.

“It just wouldn’t havehappened without thewarm hearts and willinghands of all the great peo-ple of Palm Springs – andyou are the reason we arecoming back,” Foster saidin the letter.

Denise Goolsby can bereached at Denise.Goolsby

@DesertSun.com and onTwitter @DeniseGoolsby

GolfContinued from 1A

Iraq, many, many water projects beingbuilt in Afghanistan and Iraq,” said Dor-gan, who served nearly two decades inthe Senate. “But never quite the same en-thusiasm for investment in those samekinds of projects here in the UnitedStates.”

Finding money to build or upgradepipelines, wastewater treatment plants,storage systems and other infrastruc-ture is particularly critical in California,which is now enduring the fourth year ofa historic drought. The Public Policy In-stitute of California, a nonpartisan thinktank, released a report last month esti-mating that the state’s water infrastruc-ture is underfunded by $2 to $3 billionper year in several critical areas.

State policymakers have taken somesteps to narrow that gap. Last year, vot-ers approved a $7.5 billion water bondpushed by Gov. Jerry Brown, and lastweek Brown signed two bills that wouldspeed up the spending of more than $1billion in additional funds to support wa-ter recycling, desalination and emergen-cy relief for the Central Valley, amongother measures.

But like other water officials at Mon-day’s conference, Ed Pack, a member ofthe Coachella Valley Water District’sboard of directors, said he didn’t thinkthe funding approved so far would makemuch of an impact. While the money willhelp, he said, “it’s not going to come closeto what the state’s going to need.”

Kathy Tiegs, a member of the Cuca-monga Valley Water District’s board ofdirectors, called the water bond and themore recent legislation “a quick fix.”

“I don’t think that they’re truly ad-

dressing the problem,” she said.Walters, who has written about state

politics for 40 years, was even morecritical, arguing that the recent fundingpackages “basically don’t do anythingabout the drought.” The water bond, henoted, doesn’t actually allocate money,but rather sets up a grant processthrough which local water agencies andother entities can apply for funding.

“It’s another process, it’s not a prod-uct. It doesn’t really do anything unto it-self,” Walters said. “What happens inCalifornia very often is the inability toproduce a product manifests itself inelaborate processes that go on and onand on and on, and basically get the poli-ticians of the moment off the hook.”

Walters attributed California’s inabil-ity to implement coherent water policyto the state’s massive size and many com-peting interest groups, including CentralValley farmers, the parched desert citiesof Southern California and environmen-tal groups intent on protecting the en-dangered Delta smelt fish in the Sacra-ment-San Joaquin River Delta. He called

California’s water politics “a microcosmof the state as a whole and its politics as awhole.”

“What we see in water...is fragmenta-tion. There’s not a consensus,” Walterssaid. “It’s, ‘I want to protect my drops ofthat commodity. I’m not particularlyconcerned about other people’s drops.’”

The speakers at Monday’s event tai-lored their remarks to the utility indus-try executives in the audience. Theydidn’t spend much time discussing resi-dential water use or conservation, focus-ing instead on major water infrastruc-ture projects.

Dorgan, a moderate “Blue Dog Demo-crat” who retired in 2011, criticized Con-gress for killing what he called one of thebest tools for funding such projects: ear-marks.

For years, Democrats and Republi-cans used earmarks to fund specific pro-jects in their home district or state,boosting local economies and ingratiat-ing themselves with voters. But after abarrage of seemingly wasteful ear-marks — including $223 million for Alas-ka’s “bridge to nowhere” — sparked pub-lic outrage, Congress banned the prac-tice in 2011.

That decision, Dorgan said, has donelittle to limit spending, while making lifedifficult for water agencies looking tosecure funding for key infrastructureprojects. Now, local water officials must

“beg” federal agencies like the ArmyCorps of Engineers and the Bureau ofReclamation for money, he said.

“I would much prefer that those whoare the members of Congress and sena-tors who live here, and work here, andtalk to you, and understand your needsand your investments — I’d much preferthat be done by earmarked spending bythe member of Congress, rather thansomeone in an agency whose name you’llnever learn,” Dorgan said.

Earmarks used to be a key source offunding for the Coachella Valley WaterDistrict, helping the agency pay for sew-ers, sewage treatment, water pipelinesand other infrastructure, Pack said.While critics derided the practice as“pork-barrel spending,” earmarks were“the best things we used to get,” Packsaid.

Walters was also asked how he wouldaddress the Salton Sea, which couldcause major damage to the environmentand public health as it continues toshrink. The water flowing to the SaltonSea will decline sharply starting in 2017,accelerating the lake’s decline and po-tentially creating billions of dollars inpublic health costs.

Having grown up in El Centro, Wal-ters said he’s seen the beleaguered lake“in all its incarnations, from seaside re-sort to a soup.” But with no natural in-flows serving the Salton Sea — whichformed about 100 years ago, when an ir-rigation canal broke — Walters said hedoesn’t see much hope for its future.

“Maybe it’s just an artificial thing thatneeds to go away,” he said. “That’s my un-professional opinion, but I don’t see anyway to make it viable in the long run.”

Sammy Rothcan be reached atsammy.roth@desertsun.com, (760) 778-4622and @Sammy_Roth.

DroughtContinued from 1A

JAY CALDERON/THE DESERT SUNFormer Sen. Byron Dorgan speaks during theCalifornia Utility Executive ManagementAssociation’s Elected Officials Summit inIndian Wells.

“It’s another process, it’snot a product. It doesn’treally do anything untoitself.”DAN WALTERSSacramento Bee columnist