State and federal agencies plan to deliver more water to California farms and cities following recent storms that brought rain and snow and boosted reservoir levels.
Cities in Southern California and other agencies that depend on water delivered from Northern California via the State Water Project are projected to receive 35% of requested water supplies, up from an estimated 20% last month, the state Department of Water Resources said Tuesday.
In a similar announcement, the federal Bureau of Reclamation said agricultural irrigation districts south of the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta are expected to receive 35% of their full contract amounts from the federal Central Valley Project — more than double the 15% they were allocated at this time last year.
The agency said in a written statement that officials are acting on a recent order by President Trump to “maximize water supply, particularly for south-of-Delta contracts.”
After two wet years and the latest series of storms this month, the state’s biggest reservoirs, including Lake Oroville and Shasta Lake, stand at above-average levels.
“California is experiencing a winter of extremes,” said Karla Nemeth, the department’s director. “We’ve seen predominately dry conditions broken up by very wet, short storm events. Those conditions mean we must move as much water when it’s available.”
Agricultural water agencies welcomed the announcement, saying it marks a notable improvement in their supplies from last year, despite a similar water situation at that time.
Allison Febbo, general manager of the Fresno-based Westlands Water District, said the allocation “offers our farmers the opportunity to make critical planting decisions that optimize feeding the nation.”
The state and federal water systems, including dams, aqueducts and pumping facilities, are among the world’s largest. They pump water from the Delta and send supplies flowing to Central Valley farmlands and about 30 million people.
In the San Joaquin Valley, farmers use the water to irrigate pistachios, almonds, grapes, tomatoes, hay and other crops.
Federico Barajas, executive director of the San Luis & Delta-Mendota Water Authority in Los Banos, said this year’s federal allocation is a significant improvement over last year’s initial allocation.
“However, given the high storage conditions and current high Delta outflow from recent storms, I know that many of the Water Authority’s members were hoping for a higher initial allocation,” Barajas said.
Officials typically set the water allocations based on reservoir conditions, precipitation and snowpack in the Sierra Nevada. The allocations are often updated as conditions change during the winter and spring.
This year, storms have brought the most snow and rain to Northern California, while areas to the south have seen below-average precipitation. This has meant reduced flows in the San Joaquin River and its tributaries, which has led to limitations on the Central Valley Project’s water deliveries in the San Joaquin Valley because of environmental regulations aimed at protecting threatened fish species in the Delta.
“Unfortunately, this year’s rainfall has disproportionately fallen in the northern portion of the Central Valley Project,” Barajas said.
He said federal officials had worked with his agency to “implement improvements in the allocation process over the last year, which has in part led to this higher initial allocation.”
Karl Stock, the Bureau of Reclamation’s regional director, said the recent series of atmospheric river storms and the relatively high reservoir levels have benefited the water outlook.
“However, the San Joaquin Basin has experienced critically dry conditions” this winter, he said. The initial allocations “reflect this significant variation across the Sacramento and San Joaquin valleys.”
The agency said other water suppliers north of the Delta are allocated 100% of their contract amounts, as are suppliers along the American River and in the Delta region. Agricultural suppliers that receive water from the Friant-Kern and Madera canals, meanwhile, were allocated 45% of their basic allotments.
Stock noted that California still has a portion of the traditionally wet season left until April. He said the agency is “committed to delivering as much water as possible to our contractors consistent with the goals of the Central Valley Project and [Trump’s] Executive Order 14181.”
Jeffrey Mount, a senior fellow at the Public Policy Institute of California’s Water Policy Center, said the announcement didn’t seem out of the ordinary for the Bureau of Reclamation, which typically sets allocations based on the current conditions.
“They’re saying that they are going to maximize this, but they’re not really giving the specifics on how they’re going to do that in direct operations,” Mount said.
The federal agency had shifted to taking a more conservative approach in its projected allocations following the severe 2020-22 drought, Mount said.
“It looks like they’re being a little more the way they used to be in their projections, rather than the conservative approach they were taking after the drought,” he said.
The initial supply forecast is timed to inform farmers as they plan the crops they will be planting. When federal supplies are reduced, growers typically turn to pumping more groundwater. So if the federal government ends up delivering more water to farms this year, Mount said, that will help farmers by enabling them to pump less groundwater.
The Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, which delivers supplies from the State Water Project to cities and local agencies, said the increased water deliveries will help meet demands and may add to the record amount of water it currently has stored in reservoirs and underground storage areas.
MWD General Manager Deven Upadhyay said the increased allocation “helps to buttress our preparedness for the inevitable swing back to dry conditions.”
Environmental advocates have criticized state and federal water management decisions in recent years, citing declining populations of threatened fish in the Delta and two consecutive years of canceled salmon fishing seasons because of low population numbers.
Ashley Overhouse, water policy adviser for the group Defenders of Wildlife, said the state and federal announcements to increase water deliveries are “irresponsible and reckless” and will further harm the Delta’s deteriorating ecosystem and native fish by extracting excessive amounts of water.
“Last year, we saw the highest mortality rate of winter-run Chinook salmon in a four-year period,” Overhouse said. “We also saw an unusually high number of Central Valley steelhead impacted by Delta pumping last year, exceeding thresholds established under the Endangered Species Act.”
She said as climate change continues to affect California’s water resources, the state “must prioritize the health of our waterways.”
The Bureau of Reclamation said in its announcement that the Trump administration is also investing more than $315 million in new water storage projects, including plans to build Sites Reservoir and raise a dam to expand San Luis Reservoir.
Those federal investments are not new, however. The projects were also supported by the Biden administration.
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