The Biden administration has adopted new rules for operating California’s major water supply systems in the Central Valley, endorsing a plan backed by state officials that aims to strike a balance between ensuring the protection of endangered fish species and providing a reliable water supply for farms and cities.
Federal and state officials said new operating rules for the Central Valley Project and the State Water Project, developed over the past three years, will bring greater stability to the state’s supplies in light of worsening droughts intensified by climate change.
“The updated rules mark a new path forward that will provide greater certainty for water users, fish and wildlife,” said Karl Stock, regional director of the Federal Bureau of Reclamation, calling it a “sustainable plan that builds in significant flexibility.” .”
Staff from several federal and state agencies developed the revised plan after California and environmental groups successfully sued to challenge previous rules adopted during Trump’s first presidency. The new framework replaces court-ordered interim plans adopted over the past three years, but long-running disputes over California’s water management are far from resolved.
Environmental and fishing groups said the new rules fail to provide adequate protection threatened and endangered fish species in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta. Agricultural water districts raised other criticisms. And newly elected President Donald Trump, who has done just that promised to supply more water to farms and cities, is expected to once again try to revamp California’s water management.
Having the new plan “helps keep things steady for now,” said Greg Gartrell, a former manager of the Contra Costa Water District. “If the new government wants to change it, they will have to go through a big process, and that will take a few years.”
Gartrell said he expects another round of lawsuits to follow as well.
Read more: Climate change identified as leading cause of worsening drought in western United States
Some initial legal challenges have already begun. Last month, a group of agricultural water districts government agencies sued to challenge their approval of the State Water Project rules and a related permit for the “incidental take” of endangered species caused by the pumping facilities. Westlands Water District, the largest supplier in the Central Valley, said there are unresolved questions about how the operations of the state and federally operated systems will be coordinated.
“We are disappointed with the truncated and incomplete process” that led to the rules, said Allison Febbo, chief executive of Westlands. The process was conducted on a “rushed timeline,” she said, and failed to “address critical issues raised by key stakeholders.”
Water from the Delta is pumped to cities throughout Southern California, and the region’s largest supplier supported the plan. Deven Upadhyay, interim general manager of the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, said it provides “regulatory stability” that is critical to water management.
Federal officials defended their process, saying they met legal requirements, convened many meetings and integrated extensive input. The plan is based on “real collaboration, dialogue and science,” said Jennifer Quan, regional administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Fisheries.
The rules went into effect last week as the federal Bureau of Reclamation approved the plan and the supporting biological views, which determine how much water can be pumped and how river flows are managed in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta. The rules apply to the operation of dams, aqueducts and pumping stations in the Central Valley Project and the State Water Project, two of the largest water systems in the world, which supply water to Central Valley agricultural lands and approximately 30 million people.
The extraction of water by the massive pumps that feed the systems has contributed to the ecological degradation of the Delta and San Francisco Bay, where endangered fish species include steel trout, two species of Chinook salmon, longfin smelt, Delta smelt and are green sturgeon.
Federal officials said the changes under the new rules include provisions aimed at helping manage the release of cold water reservoirs from Shasta Dam endangered winter Chinook salmon to survive. Other provisions focus on an ‘adaptive management’ approach that enables managers to integrate new scientific findings.
Shasta Dam, part of the Central Valley Project, towers over the Sacramento River near Redding. (Max Whittaker/For The Times)
Deciding how to manage these water systems is “one of the most difficult natural resource issues west of the Mississippi,” said Charlton “Chuck” Bonham, director of the California Department of Fish and Wildlife. He said the two systems’ activities had been divided and “forced into conflict” in recent years, but were now closely coordinated under the rules.
“Chaos hurts,” Bonham said. “Avoiding chaos, aligning and moving forward together, against the backdrop of a hotter and drier future, is the benefit of applying these operational rules the way we have.”
He said some “yelling and screaming” could still be expected over the plan, but that the process was thorough and not rushed.
“The reality is that it is not political,” he said, describing the plan as an attempt to “find the right balance” that will be “good for both people and the environment.”
In announcing the new rules on Friday, state and federal officials said a key goal is making the management framework flexible to adapt to climate change. Paul Souza, regional director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, pointed to recent scientific findings that over the past 25 years the driest quarter century in 1200 years in the American West, and that is global warming cause more intense droughts.
“We know that our fisheries are in steep decline,” Souza said. “So it’s really important to think about how we use the resources we love in a hotter and drier climate, and this is a step forward.”
Souza said the provisions on ‘adaptive management’ add additional flexibility to operations and will allow managers to decide based on the latest science, for example whether fish populations would benefit from the release of a ‘pulse of water’. He and other officials also praised the inclusion of proposed negotiated agreements in which water agencies have pledged to forego certain amounts of water while funding projects to improve wetland habitats in an effort to help fish species and the ecosystem.
Read more: Research shows that the last quarter century of the American West has been the driest in 1,200 years
Gov. Gavine Newsom, who is promoting plans for construction Sites Reservoir and a proposed $20 billion water tunnel in the Deltapraised the new framework as an important step toward improving management and making the state’s water systems more resilient.
“We know what the future holds for our state: hotter hot and drier,” Newsom said. “That means we must now do everything we can to prepare and ensure that our water infrastructure can withstand these extremes.”
However, environmental advocates say protections for endangered fish species are inadequate.
“These rules are slightly better for the environment than current operations, but not good enough to meet legal obligations, let alone enable recovery of species and ecosystems,” said Ashley Overhouse, water policy advisor for the group Defenders of Wildlife .
Jon Rosenfield, scientific director of the group San Francisco Baykeeper, said federal rules are failing to improve conditions for seven fish species that are rapidly becoming extinct. He said he expects the Trump administration will try to further weaken “this very weak set of protections.”
Environmental groups have also pushed for the State Water Resources Control Board to adopt strict regulatory standards considering options for updating its plan for managing flows in the Delta.
Read more: Another fish from California has been added to the federal endangered species list
Trump has said that California’s water is “terribly mismanaged” and has indicated that he wants that weaken protections, grieving that because of “a little fish called a smelt, they’re sending millions and millions of gallons of water into the Pacific Ocean.”
Such arguments over water in the Delta have long pitted California farmers and agricultural water districts against environmental groups, fishing advocates and indigenous tribes.
California’s coastal fisheries are highly catch-dependent fall run Chinook salmon. But with the fish population struggling after years of severe drought, officials have halted the salmon fishing season for the past two years.
Those in the fishing industry have blamed water managers for decisions they say have deprived rivers of the cold flows that salmon need to survive.
Scott Artis, executive director of the Golden State Salmon Assn., said the Bureau of Reclamation’s actions in recent years have had devastating consequences for salmon. While the new plan includes “a few modest improvements,” he said, “it is still not enough.”
This story originally appeared in the Los Angeles Times.
