#Delta conveyance project bad update#

However, upcoming meeting agendas do not include items related to the plan. Recent State Board meetings have included numerous calls from stakeholders for the Board to move forward with the water quality plan, and one Board member has called for an update.

(Newly public documentary evidence in the state’s suit seems to confirm what many observers had suspected: the final BiOps process was politically tainted, with scientists sidelined and science buried.) Water users had hoped to use the Trump BiOp as the baseline for voluntary agreement negotiations, but walked away from negotiations when the suit was filed. Final BiOps released later that year found that the Trump plan would not jeopardize endangered fish California and several environmental groups then sued the administration over the rolled-back protections. Department of the Interior, under then-Secretary and former Westlands Water District lobbyist David Bernhardt, suppressed the report, and the team that produced it was replaced with a different team charged with reversing the findings. (Patterns may look different under a variety of conditions). These 2018 Delta maps provide a very generalized picture (not for planning or scientific purposes) of 1) flow patterns in absence of pumping, 2) flow patterns when river inflows are low and pumps are operating. Their report found that increased pumping would harm populations of several protected species, including winter-run Chinook, steelhead trout, and orcas, which feed on salmon in the ocean. In July 2019, federal scientists completed work on new BiOps (which are required by the federal Endangered Species Act and govern joint operations of the Central Valley Project and the State Water Project) that had been initiated during the Obama administration. The stalemate is due at least in part to political skullduggery around new biological opinions (BiOps) for endangered Delta species that would allow increased diversions from the Central Valley Project and deliver on then-President Trump’s promises of more water for agricultural interests. “The last public presentation of a voluntary agreement proposal that we saw was in February of 2020,” says Rachel Zwillinger of Defenders of Wildlife, one of the NGO’s involved in the discussions. To date, water users and state agencies, including the departments of Water Resources and Fish and Wildlife, have proposed several voluntary agreement (VA) frameworks however, none have been submitted to the Board for approval. These agreements might permit lower instream flows in exchange for “non-flow” measures such as habitat improvements to meet environmental goals that include the Delta Reform Act’s requirement to double populations of endangered Chinook salmon. However, in an effort to avoid time-consuming litigation and water rights adjudications, the state halted further work on the update, hoping to reach “voluntary settlement agreements” with water users.įlows in 2011 on the 120-mile-long American River just north of Sacramento, California. In 2018, the State Board seemed to be on the verge of completing the update: it adopted instream flow objectives for the lower San Joaquin River and its tributaries (known as Phase 1), calling for 30% to 50% of unimpaired flows, and released the framework of a similar plan for the Sacramento River and flows into and through the Delta (Phase 2).

“By some measures we are now 12 years into a triennial review,” says San Francisco Baykeeper’s Jon Rosenfield.

At the same time, plans for a structure with the potential to divert more water than ever to southern cities and farms are creeping ahead.īy law the Bay-Delta Plan - which establishes minimum flows through the Delta from the Sacramento and San Joaquin Rivers and their tributaries - is supposed to be reviewed every three years however, parts of the plan have not been amended since 2006.

#Delta conveyance project bad update#

Environmental groups, fishermen, tribes, and a host of others are calling on the State Water Resources Control Board to complete and implement a long-delayed update to the Water Quality Control Plan for the Bay and Delta (Bay-Delta Plan), to protect the imperiled ecosystem. As California stares down the barrel of yet another dry year, alarm bells are already ringing over conditions in the Delta.