The Biden administration adopted new rules for operating California’s major water systems in the Central Valley, approving a plan backed by state officials that aims to strike a balance between ensuring protection of endangered fish species and provide reliable water supplies to farms and cities.
Federal and state officials say new operating rules for the Central Valley Project and the National Water Project, developed over the past three years, will provide greater stability to the state’s supplies in the face of worsening droughts intensified by climate change.
“The updated rules mark a new path forward that will provide more certainty for water users, fish and wildlife,” said Karl Stock, regional director of the Federal Bureau of Reclamation, calling it “sustainable plan which is based on great 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-standing disputes over California’s water management are far from resolved.
Environmental and fishing groups said the new rules fail to provide adequate protections for threatened and endangered fish species in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta. Agricultural water districts have raised other criticisms. And President-elect Donald Trump, who committed to providing more water to farms and cities, should once again seek to reorganize water management in California.
Having the new plan “helps lock things in” for now, said Greg Gartrell, former director of the Contra Costa Water District. “If the new administration wants to change things, it will have to go through an extensive process to do so, and that will take a few years.”
Gartrell said he expects there will also be a new round of lawsuits.
Some initial legal challenges have already begun. Last month, a group of agricultural water districts state agencies sued to challenge their approval of State Water Project rules and a related permit for “incidental take” of endangered species caused by pumping facilities. The Westlands Water District, the Central Valley’s largest provider, said there remained unresolved questions about how operations of the state and federally run systems would be aligned.
“We are disappointed by the truncated and incomplete process” that led to the rules being established, said Allison Febbo, Westlands general manager. The process was carried out “in a rushed timeframe”, she said, and failed to resolve “critical issues raised by key stakeholders”.
Water from the Delta is pumped to cities in Southern California, and the region’s largest supplier has supported the plan. Deven Upadhyay, acting general manager of the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, said the plan provides crucial “regulatory stability” for water management.
Federal officials defended their process, saying it met legal requirements, called numerous meetings and incorporated extensive input. The plan is based on “real collaboration, dialogue and science,” said Jennifer Quan, regional administrator for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Fisheries.
The rules took effect last week as the Federal Bureau of Reclamation approved the plan and supporting biological opinions that determine how much water can be pumped and how river flows are managed in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta. The rules govern the operation of the dams, aqueducts and pumping plants of the Central Valley Project and the State Water Project, two of the largest water systems in the world, which supply farmland in the Central Valley and about 30 million people.
Water withdrawals by the massive pumps that power the systems have contributed to the ecological degradation of the San Francisco Delta and Bay, where threatened and endangered fish species include rainbow trout, two types of Chinook salmon, smelt, delta smelt and green sturgeon.
Federal officials said changes in the new rules include provisions to manage discharges from Shasta Dam’s cold water reservoirs to help Winter migration Chinook salmon, an endangered species survive. Other provisions emphasize an “adaptive management” approach that will allow managers to integrate new scientific discoveries.
Shasta Dam, part of the Central Valley Project, dominates the Sacramento River near Redding.
(Max Whittaker/For Time)
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’ operations had been divided in recent years and “forced into conflict” but were now closely aligned under the rules.
“Chaos hurts,” Bonham said. “Avoiding chaos, aligning and moving forward together, facing a hotter, drier future, is the benefit of applying these operational rules as we have applied them.”
He said “screams and screams” could still be expected about the plan, but that the process had been thorough and not rushed.
“The reality is it’s not political,” he said, describing the plan as an effort to “find the right balance” that will be “good for both people and the environment.”
In announcing the new rules Friday, state and federal officials said a key goal was to make the management framework flexible to adapt to climate change. Paul Souza, regional director of the US Fish and Wildlife Service, highlighted recent scientific findings that the last 25 years have probably been the most The driest quarter century in 1,200 years in the American West, and that global warming is causing more intense droughts.
“We know our fisheries are in great decline,” Souza said. “So it’s really important to think about how we manage the resources we love in a hotter, drier climate, and this is a step forward.”
Souza said the “adaptive management” provisions bring 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 an “impulse of ‘water “. He and other officials also touted the inclusion of proposed negotiated agreements in which water agencies agreed to forgo certain amounts of water while funding projects to improve wetland habitats with the aim of helping fish species and the ecosystem.
Gov. Gavin Newsom, who is promoting plans to build Site reservoir and a $20 billion proposal water tunnel in the Deltawelcomed the new framework as an important step towards improving management and making the state’s water systems more resilient.
“We know what the future holds for our state: warmer temperatures and drier temperatures,” Newsom said. “This means we need to do everything we can now to prepare and ensure our water infrastructure can cope with these extremes. »
However, conservationists have said protections for imperiled fish species are inadequate.
“These rules are somewhat better for the environment than current operations, but not good enough to meet legal obligations, let alone enable the recovery of species and ecosystems,” said Ashley Overhouse, policy advisor for the water for the group Defenders of Wildlife.
Jon Rosenfield, science director of the San Francisco Baykeeper group, said federal rules fail to improve conditions for seven fish species that are rapidly declining toward extinction. He said he expects the Trump administration to try to further weaken “this very weak set of protections.”
Environmental groups also called on the State Water Resources Control Board to adopt strict regulatory standards as it consider the options for updating its flow management plan in the Delta.
Trump said California’s water was “horribly mismanaged” and indicated he wanted weaken protections, deploring that because of “a little fish called a smelt, they send millions and millions of gallons of water into the Pacific Ocean.”
Such debates over water in the Delta have long pitted California farmers and agricultural water districts against environmental groups, fishing advocates and native tribes.
California’s inshore fishing industry relies heavily on catches Fall Chinook Salmon. But as the fish population struggles after years of severe drought, authorities have halted the salmon fishing season for the past two years.
Fishing industry stakeholders have blamed water managers for decisions they say have deprived rivers of the cold currents salmon need to survive.
Scott Artis, executive director of the Golden State Salmon Assn., said the Bureau of Reclamation’s actions have had devastating effects on salmon in recent years. Although the new plan includes “some modest improvements,” he said, “it’s not enough.”
