The huge inland body of water that is the heart of California’s water system is under major stress.
That’s why state officials say they worked for years to come up with a plan to help halt the ecological decline of the San Francisco Bay and Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta.
Now that plan is under attack from the Trump administration and the largest irrigation authority in the Central Valley.
In a letter, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation says California’s plan for the Delta will shortchange farmers by restricting how much water the federal government pumps from the state’s largest rivers. The letter says the plan threatens the “entire fabric of California’s agricultural economy.”
The bureau manages one of California’s two main water systems, including massive pumps that pull water from the Delta and send it flowing to farms and communities as far south as Bakersfield. The agency said that if California regulators don’t change the plan, the federal government won’t contribute funds to projects that restore habitat for fish and other wildlife, something endorsed by Gov. Gavin Newsom.
The Central Valley’s Westlands Water District also announced it would pull out of providing funds for habitat restoration if the state sticks to its current plan, because it abandons key parts of agreements negotiated with the state in 2022.
“The state substantially has changed the terms and walked away” from that earlier deal, Westlands General Manager Allison Febbo said.
The state’s bay-Delta plan has been in the making throughout Newsom’s two terms as governor. It “reflects years of collaboration with water users, federal and state agencies” and others, and includes “substantial revisions made in response to comments from the Bureau of Reclamation,” said Jackie Carpenter, a spokesperson for the state water board.
Now the growing conflict over the plan, which is set to be adopted next month by the State Water Resources Control Board, suggests a legal battle is likely.
The Delta provides water for nearly 30 million people and 4 million acres of farmland. As the state has relied heavily on its water, native fish such as Chinook salmon, steelhead trout and longfin smelt have declined.
Once adopted, the state plan will set rules that determine how much water can be pumped out of the Delta and how much should stay in rivers and the estuary for fish and the environment.
Released last month, it would give water agencies two ways of complying with Delta water quality rules. They could either limit pumping to maintain minimum levels of water in rivers and the estuary, as has traditionally been done, or take part in “voluntary agreements” in which water agencies commit to ensuring certain river flows and paying for fish habitat restoration.
This voluntary approach, which state officials call the Healthy Rivers and Landscapes program, has been controversial. Many California water agencies support it. Environmental advocates contend it would starve the Delta and threaten fish already in severe decline.
Newsom and his administration have touted the deals as a break with years of conflict that will benefit the Delta’s ecology.
If a water agency fails to meet commitments under the collaborative approach, state officials have said, they still have the option of putting that agency back under the traditional regulations — one of the points the Trump administration called “unworkable.”
While fighting California on environmental policy, Trump has sought to pump more water from the state’s rivers. Last year, the Trump administration announced it would soon start pumping more into the aqueducts of the Central Valley Project. At the same time, the administration has moved to weaken federal protections for endangered fish and other species.
In its letter, the Bureau of Reclamation cited concerns about restrictions on pumping under the state’s plan. Deputy Commissioner Aubrey Bettencourt wrote that the state cannot impose such conditions on how the federal government operates reservoirs, such as Shasta Dam and Folsom Dam.
She said the current plan is an example of the board’s regulatory overreach.
Bettencourt urged the board to scrap the current proposal and go back to the plan outlined in 2022.
It’s unclear what the Trump administration intends here, said Jeffrey Mount, a senior fellow at the Public Policy Institute of California.
“I don’t know if their strategy is that, ‘We’re out, we’re going to wreck the plan,’” Mount said. “The strategy could be to blow it up. The strategy could be to force it into litigation. The strategy could be to get them to change it so that it’s more favorable for them.”
Whatever the intention, the strong opposition from both the federal government and the largest water agency in the Central Valley puts all the Newsom administration’s water deals at risk, Mount said.
The governor’s office referred questions to the California Department of Water Resources, which said the state will continue working with water agencies to advance the collaborative program, calling it “a critical step forward to protect future water supplies while improving environmental conditions across our largest river systems.”
The state water board is accepting comments on the plan until Sept. 18 and will consider whether to adopt it at a hearing on Oct. 28 and 29.
Newsom’s plan for negotiated agreements with water agencies would be disastrous for fish and the environment in the Delta, said Gary Bobker, program director of the environmental group Friends of the River.
“The Trump approach is worse because it would move us backward, resulting in conditions even more harmful than the current status quo,” he said, “and neutering the state’s ability to protect and manage its own water resources.”
The Trump administration apparently wants to ensure the plan that’s adopted does not interfere while the federal government weakens environmental protections and maximizes the water it takes from the Delta, said Barry Nelson, an advisor with the Golden State Salmon Assn., a nonprofit group.
The opposition from the Trump administration and Westlands Water District, he said, present the Newsom administration and the state water board with a thorny test.
“Will they stand up or roll over?” he said. “If they agree to bow to the bureau’s demands, they would need to rewrite the plan dramatically, which would take months. And the world would know that Trump forced Newsom to gut his own signature water plan.”
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