SACRAMENTO, Calif. – Chairman Joe Biden and Governor Gavin Newsom are rushing to protect vulnerable Chinook salmon and Delta smelt in California’s most important water supply before a possible second Trump presidency.
Former President Donald Trump vowed this year to send more water to drought-weary Republican farmers if he is re-elected. Biden and Newsom are trying to thwart the move that could push endangered fish closer to extinction by revising Trump-era rules before the end of 2024.
The Biden administration is on track to bring more protections for fish to the way state and federal officials operate the 400-mile series of reservoirs, pumps and canals that move water (and kill fish) across the state by December 6. according to a federal agency diagram obtained by POLITICO. The schedule only allows two weeks for public review.
“We want this to happen by the end of this administration, and that’s the commitment we’ve gotten,” Karla Nemeth, California’s water resources director, said in an interview.
Republicans are already pushing back.
“It’s clear they’re being rushed for political purposes,” Rep. David Valadao, a Republican from the agriculturally rich district north of Bakersfield, said in an interview. “They know it won’t be good. That’s why they’re so secretive.”
Complaints from farmers in the conservative-leaning Central Valley about tight irrigation water, which often forces them to leave fields empty, have long fueled Republican debate. This year, despite the past two wet winters, limited water supplies from the state and federal government have provided Trump with additional fodder.
“They have so much water,” Trump said in February at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Maryland, recounting an interaction with an unnamed congressman from California: “I said, ‘I see you’re in a drought.’ They said, ‘No, we don’t have a drought. We have so much water you don’t know what to do.” But they send it to the Pacific Ocean. We will no longer let them get away with that.”
For top Democrats in deep blue California, water is a key front in their mission to “Trump-proof” environmental protections before the election. Newsom has built a national profile as a primary opponent of Trump, who has made California a frequent target and riled his base against policies such as national electric vehicle mandates.
The distribution of supply for California’s most important water hub, the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, is a perpetual political football.
At stake are the declining populations of endangered fish species such as Chinook salmon, which struggle in warm and sluggish waters or become entangled in the pumps, and the daily operation of a large public pipe system that collects water in the wetter northern part of the country. the state will supply some 25 million California taps and the nation’s largest producers of nuts, vegetables, fruits and beef.
Trump stayed true to a campaign promise when he changed Obama-era rules four years ago to send more water to farmers, after tapping a powerful lobbyist for Central Valley growers, David Bernhardt, as Interior secretary for oversight to keep up the efforts. But environmental groups and the Newsom administration immediately filed a lawsuit. Every year since then, state and federal officials have had to approve court-mandated temporary plans while they negotiated something more permanent.
Now it’s the Biden administration’s turn to rewrite the rules that both the California-led State Water Project and the federally led Central Valley Project follow in an effort to coordinate their joint operations.
Bureau of Reclamation spokesperson Mary Lee Knecht said in an email that the anticipated federal listing of longfin smelt as endangered and the court-ordered interim plans justify completing the new rules within the schedule.
For California, the benefit of having the rules in place is that they can strengthen legal defenses if Trump tries to implement them again, said California’s Nemeth.
“It matters that they are complete,” she said.
She is also already considering how to lean on California’s existing state protections, which go beyond federal ones.
“It seems likely that another federal government would reopen things and take another look,” Nemeth said. “We would still have our California license, so that would be the driver.”
Meanwhile, California Republicans in Congress are trying to codify Trump’s version of the rules. Valadao, also a dairy farmer, wrote the language because Trump’s rules made it easier to send more water south, he said.
“I have farmers all over the Valley who are literally without water,” Valadao said. “It wasn’t a dramatic change, but it was a change in a positive direction for us.”
The bill’s supporters include the powerful Westlands Water District and other Central Valley irrigators, some of whom voiced their support at a House Natural Resources Committee hearing in Tulare, California, last spring.
“It is good public policy to support farming communities,” William Bourdeau, director of the Westlands board of directors who is also executive vice president at nut, fruit and vegetable producing Harris Farms, said at the hearing. “It is in our national interest.”
The language was stripped from the budget bill earlier this year, but Valadao said he would continue to try to pass it as a rider — and that he could get a lot more help in a lame-duck session or if Republicans leave Congress this fall to transport.
The interim makes no one happy and puts both Newsom and Biden in a difficult position.
The flip-flopping, a sign of the persistence of California’s water wars but also a sign of increasing polarization, has exhausted farmers and environmentalists alike. The Biden administration’s rewrite took more than two and a half years of deliberation, modeling and analysis, Bureau of Reclamation spokesman Knecht said.
“There has been an endless cycle of consultation after consultation, and that is a huge drain,” said Scott Petersen, director of water policy at the San Luis & Delta-Mendota Water Authority, which supplies water from the federal Central Valley Project to farmers. . “It is important that this process is carried out properly and not driven by political timelines.”
It’s not easy. The rules for the projects make good political talking points, but they are so complicated that partisan disagreements boil down to issues like flow rates for a specific species or where to place a temperature gauge in a river. And it’s hard to tease out the impact of the rules amid all the back and forth.
“I think there are some water users in the system who think that if there is a change in administration, there will be a major change in the way water is done here in California, and I disagree with that assessment” , says Jennifer Pierre. , the general manager of the State Water Contractors, which draws water from the state-owned company in the Delta.
Environmentalists argue that the annual plans provide only slightly more protection for the fish than the Trump rules, calling them “Trump-lite.” They have also attacked Newsom over decisions to divert water from the sensitive Delta region, which they say have caused fish populations like salmon and sturgeon to plummet.
“These fish are increasingly endangered,” said Jon Rosenfield, senior scientist at San Francisco Baykeeper. “They need actual protections that biologists approve, not some negotiated interim insufficient protections that a court approves every year.”
Ashley Overhouse, an attorney with Defenders of Wildlife who is officially participating in the negotiations, called the Trump-era rules “not based on the best available science and the result of political interference.” But she is also wary of the Biden administration’s rush to finalize new rules this year, which will require it to review thousands of complex pages in two weeks.
“While we support this effort, it is a monumental effort,” Overhouse said. “We will do our best.”
