By Ryan Sabalow and Dale Kasler
Printed December 21, 2019
Even before he was sworn into office, Gov. Gavin Newsom threw his weight behind a series of tentative deals, brokered by his predecessor, that were intended to bring lasting peace to California’s never-ending battles over water and endangered fish.
The deals, designed to reallocate water from the state’s major rivers, have yet to be finalized a year later.
Now, one of the nation’s most powerful farm irrigation districts says it will back out of the agreements completely if Newsom follows through with a pledge to sue President Donald Trump over a federal plan to pump more water to farmers from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, the fragile estuary on Sacramento’s doorstep.
The agreements are intended to resolve a more than decade-old dispute over how much water should be left in the state’s major rivers to prop up endangered fish populations. Those same rivers also supply California’s massive farm belt and cities from San Francisco to San Diego. It’s one of the most contentious, complicated issues facing the new governor.
Last week, Tom Birmingham, the general manager of the Westlands Water District, told Newsom’s top environmental policy appointees the massive Fresno-based water district was going walk to away from the water-sharing deals if Newsom sues Trump.
“The state’s threat of litigation places those far-reaching changes at risk, and until the issues that gave rise to this threat are resolved, it will be impossible to reach a voluntary agreement,” Birmingham said in a December 10 email to Wade Crowfoot, secretary of the Natural Resources Agency, and Jared Blumenfeld, secretary of the state Environmental Protection Agency. “At this point, the ball is in the state’s court.”
Jeff Sutton of the Tehama-Colusa Canal Authority in Willows, a major Sacramento Valley irrigation district, made a similar threat to state officials the same day. Neither Sutton or Birmingham could be reached for comment. A Newsom spokeswoman said the administration remains committed to brokering a deal.
On Thursday, U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, a longtime ally of the farmers in Westlands’ district, waded into the debate by posting a letter to the Trump and Newsom administrations on her official Twitter account, urging the factions to work together.
“I’m worried that we’re on a disastrous course for California’s water management that will harm our communities and environment,” she tweeted. “There’s only one way to avoid this potential crisis, and that’s for (Newsom) and (Interior Secretary David Bernhardt) to work together.”
The new threats significantly complicate the tentative deals brokered by former Gov. Jerry Brown shortly before he left office. His administration described them as a grand water-sharing agreement that would bring an end to the dispute between farmers, cities, fishermen and environmentalists over how much water should be left the state’s two most important rivers, the Sacramento and San Joaquin, which flow into the Delta and out under the Golden Gate Bridge.
Under Brown’s proposal, farm irrigation districts and cities would surrender water to prop up fish populations and kick in about $800 million for habitat restoration projects. The state said it would contribute $900 million to the projects. The farms and cities agreed to the plan because they felt it was less onerous than a dramatic restriction on water use favored by the State Water Resources Control Board.
Newsom, who had just been elected governor, said at the time the “voluntary agreements are preferable to a lengthy administrative process and the inevitable ensuing lawsuits.” This week, the administration continued to stand by the deals. Newsom’s Natural Resources Agency spokeswoman, Lisa Lien-Mager, said in an email Wednesday that the tentative settlements “create more opportunities for species to survive and thrive.”
With the threat last week, Westlands has aligned itself even more closely with Trump and his aims for California’s water system, which would send more water from the Delta to Westlands. The water district already has close ties to the president — their former chief lobbyist is Bernhardt, Trump’s Interior secretary.
Fish populations at risk
From the start, Brown’s agreements have been controversial. Environmentalists argued the plan didn’t go nearly far enough. The State Water Resources Control Board last December, just before Brown left office, sided with environmentalists and voted in favor of a more aggressive plan to increase flows in three key San Joaquin Valley rivers, in spite of Brown’s compromise.
Environmentalists say that for far too long, too much water has been sucked from the state’s rivers by farms and cities up and down the state. For instance, in some summers nearly 90 percent of the water in the Tuolumne River is diverted to farms and the city of San Francisco, leaving precious little for imperiled cold-water native fish like salmon and steelhead.
The board said it would revisit its ruling if a settlement was ever finalized.
Last week, a consortium of major environmental groups said the settlement talks aren’t progressing nearly fast enough and they urged the water board to “move forward rapidly” on a similar flow plan for the Sacramento River and its tributaries in order to save fish populations.
Newsom, meanwhile, has made numerous overtures to farm interests since taking office in an effort to the get settlements finalized. He started by replacing the chair of the water board, Felicia Marcus, who was viewed by farmers as tied too closely to the environmental movement.
Since then, negotiations among the various parties to the settlements have continued behind closed doors, and little has been said publicly beyond a July 1 white paper posted on the Natural Resources Agency’s website.
The document reports “substantial progress” had been made but also made clear that lots of work remained: Environmental reviews, for example, wouldn’t be finalized until 2021.
Keeping the negotiations on track also was central to Newsom’s decision to veto a bill in September that was backed by some of the state’s most influential environmental lobbyists. He infuriated environmentalists by vetoing Senate Bill 1, which would have used state law in an attempt to block every environmental initiative launched by the federal government since Jan. 20, 2017 — the day Trump took office.
Newsom said the bill would have derailed the settlement discussions. Westlands and other California water exporters feared SB 1 would create a new legal barrier that would have prevented California and the federal government from working together to manage the state’s fisheries and water supplies.
Westlands a ‘bully’
At the heart of the debate are the two massive Delta pumping stations near Tracy that supply water to irrigation districts like Westlands and to the state’s major cities as far south as San Diego. One set of pumps is run by the state; the other by the federal government. Environmentalists say decades of pumping have ruined populations of salmon, smelt and other species.
As Newsom has tried to balance these forces, the Trump administration had been moving ahead on its own Delta pumping plan designed to send more water to Westlands and other farm districts, fulfilling a pledge Trump made to San Joaquin Valley farmers while campaigning in Fresno three years ago.
The plan, developed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and National Marine Fisheries Service, would overhaul the rules governing the Delta to allow more water to be pumped south to San Joaquin Valley farms such as Westlands.
On Thursday, the Trump administration released its final environmental impact statement on the pumping plan, saying it will “optimize water deliveries and power production for California communities and farms in an environmentally sound manner.”
Last month, Newsom’s administration said Trump went too far, and he promised to sue to protect the environment.
“As stewards of this state’s remarkable natural resources, we must do everything in our power to protect them,” Newsom said in a prepared statement at the time.
Roger Patterson of the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California — who’s been involved in the negotiations and received copies of Westlands’ email — said he doesn’t believe the talks are doomed.
Patterson said he’s been told separately by Birmingham, the Westlands general manager, that his email threatening to back out of negotiations was intended to prod state and federal officials to figure out a compromise.
The process “has had a lot of bumps over the last year,” said Patterson, assistant general manager of Metropolitan. “It’s hard stuff, and I don’t think anybody’s saying they’re giving up on the process.”
But Doug Obegi, a lawyer for the Natural Resources Defense Council, said Westlands’ threat to walk away from the talks — so soon after threatening to walk during the SB 1 debate — amounts to the farm-water agency trying to “bully the state into backing away from fighting the Trump administration.”
“It does feel like we’ve seen this dance before,” Obegi said.
Full article: https://www.sacbee.com/news/local/environment/article238511218.html
See https://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article236506123.html for the article about the release of the Biological Opinions.