California’s water regulators have signed off on a sweeping rewrite of the rules governing how much water farms and cities can draw from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta and the rivers feeding it — a decision that sets the stage for the next major battle over Gov. Gavin Newsom’s long-running effort to balance water supplies with the needs of a collapsing ecosystem.
The newly approved plan gives water agencies two paths: sign on to voluntary agreements that call for giving up some water and funding habitat restoration, or default to a stricter set of state-mandated rules dictating minimum flows through the Delta.
But the deal Newsom’s administration struck with major water suppliers four years ago is now drawing fire from multiple directions. Some of the same agencies that originally backed the voluntary agreements say the final plan has become far more restrictive than what they agreed to. The Trump administration, meanwhile, is threatening to abandon the agreement altogether — along with hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funding. And environmental groups, tribes and fishing advocates argue the whole framework, including its regulatory backstop, fails to adequately protect a Delta ecosystem already in steep decline.
E. Joaquin Esquivel, chair of the State Water Resources Control Board, opened this week’s final round of hearings by noting the irony of the criticism coming from opposite camps. He dismissed water agencies’ claims that the plan has drifted from Newsom’s original vision as “convenient theater.”
“Some agencies say we kept too much oversight,” Esquivel said, while tribes and environmental organizations argue “we kept too little. They are pointing at the same provisions from opposite directions. That doesn’t make the plan perfect. It does tell me the plan sits where a regulator should.”
The central question now is whether the state can move forward without full buy-in from the powerful water interests the voluntary agreements were designed to win over — and whether the fallback regulations will actually hold up if those agencies walk away.
“That creates a world of confusion and dysfunction,” said Gary Bobker, program director at Friends of the River, during a briefing this week. “I think the board recognizes that they’re going to be handed an incredible morass.”
A Shifting Deal
The Delta sits at the heart of California’s water delivery network, where massive state and federal pumps ship Northern California river water south to farms and cities. It’s also ground zero for the state’s decades-long water wars — and an ecosystem in crisis.
State officials have warned for years that current regulations aren’t enough to halt the decline of native fish, including California’s iconic salmon runs, as more water is diverted for agricultural and urban use. The crisis has become so severe that salmon fishing seasons have been canceled for three consecutive years, an unprecedented stretch.
Yet California hasn’t fully updated its Bay-Delta Water Quality Control Plan — the foundational document guiding water quality and flow standards — since 1995.
Late Thursday night, following two days of public testimony and hours of last-minute negotiations over revisions, the State Water Resources Control Board approved the update built around Newsom’s voluntary agreements. Only one board member, civil engineer Nichole Morgan, voted no. Among those in favor was Jared Blumenfeld, Newsom’s former secretary for environmental protection and one of the original architects of the deal.
California Natural Resources Secretary Wade Crowfoot acknowledged Thursday that the path forward is uncomfortable for nearly everyone involved.
“We heard yesterday a lot of groups, including tribal governments, that continue to believe that this is not sufficient, and this is the wrong approach,” Crowfoot said. “We have water agencies that aren’t comfortable with the way that their proposal — our proposal — has materialized… That’s natural. This is a paradigm shift.”
The program, formally called the Healthy Rivers and Landscapes Program, carries a $2.9 billion price tag funded largely by the state, along with federal and water supplier contributions. The Newsom administration has promoted it as a way to avoid years of costly litigation while balancing the competing demands placed on the Delta.
But after years of environmental review and public input, several of the original backers are now pulling back. Westlands Water District, a major force in California’s $60 billion agricultural industry, is among those saying the final version bears little resemblance to what they originally agreed to.
“It’s unrecognizable,” said Jennifer Pierre, general manager of the State Water Contractors, which represents public agencies serving 750,000 acres of farmland and 27 million residents.
Pierre described the current plan as a system of “complete micromanagement” that hands too much authority to the water board’s executive director while leaving little room for flexibility.
“I think everyone’s reviewing it to see, okay, we’ve all acknowledged this is not what we proposed, but is it workable?” she said.
A New Complication From Washington
Adding to the uncertainty, the federal government — which operates its own massive pumping system delivering Delta water to Central Valley farmland — is now threatening to abandon the agreement entirely, a move that would strip away hundreds of millions of dollars in anticipated federal funding.
State officials stress that no formal withdrawal has occurred yet. But the threat carries more weight than opposition from other water users, according to Barry Nelson, senior policy analyst with the Golden State Salmon Association.
“They’re the largest water project in the Central Valley. They have more storage than anyone else in the state of California. And they jointly operate the Delta with the state,” Nelson said during a briefing with reporters.
Aubrey J.D. Bettencourt, principal deputy commissioner of the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, wrote to the state water board in September expressing the Trump administration’s “serious concern” over the near-final version of the plan.
Bettencourt said the draft “reflects more of what has come to be expected from the State Board — executive and regulatory overreach, questionable legal authority, and continued downward pressure on water users throughout the state.”
Among the federal government’s objections is a new requirement that state or federal water managers submit a mitigation plan if operational changes significantly reduce flows through the Delta. That provision follows the Trump administration’s decision last December to unilaterally increase federal water exports to Central Valley farms — a move California officials warned at the time could shortchange other water users and the environment.
Bettencourt warned that if the board doesn’t address federal concerns, the Bureau of Reclamation will withdraw support and funding from a plan she said “threatens reliability of water supplies that support… the entire fabric of California’s agricultural economy, rural communities, urban centers, and natural vitality.”
Infighting Among Water Users
State officials maintain the plan can move forward even without federal participation or the roughly $740 million in funding that had been expected from Washington.
“We’re still committed to making the (voluntary agreements) pathway work for the other participants. It does complicate things, and we’ll have to work through that,” said Eric Oppenheimer, the state water board’s executive director.
That funding was meant to help cover habitat restoration projects and water purchases under the broader $2.9 billion plan.
If the Trump administration does step away, Oppenheimer said, federal water managers would instead be bound by the fallback regulatory rules. Still, he argued the state’s modeling suggests it remains in the federal government’s best interest to stay in the voluntary agreements, since doing so would actually allow for greater water exports.
“It has a reduced water supply impact for Reclamation and its contractors, and we also think that the voluntary agreement itself is a benefit for the ecosystem,” Oppenheimer said. “But we can’t make them volunteer.”
Environmental advocates and fishing industry representatives remain skeptical that state regulators will hold the federal government accountable to the backup rules at all. They point to this past summer, when federal officials increased water releases from Lake Shasta to supply Central Valley farms despite state warnings that doing so would deplete the cold water salmon need to survive.
For those who have long criticized the voluntary agreements as too weak to protect the Delta, the current backlash from water agencies is not without irony.
“There actually might be a war among water users,” Bobker said. “That’s kind of what you’re seeing here: people who think the (voluntary agreements) are a weak-enough gutting of the regulations, and those who think actually no, they don’t go far enough.”
Original source: CalMatters
