AquAlliance, Central Delta Water Agency & California Sportfishing Protection Alliance Challenge Water Transfers

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Chico, CA, 6.24.26: AquAlliance, Central Delta Water Agency, and the California Sportfishing Protection Alliance (plaintiffs) filed a lawsuit challenging the 2026/2027 North-to-South Water Transfers proposed by San Luis Delta Mendota Water Authority (SLDMWA or agency) on June 12, 2026. The litigation alleges that the agency relied upon a California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) Addendum to the Long Term Water Transfers Environmental Impact Report as environmental review for the new, distinct Project, for which no prior EIR or negative declaration has ever been prepared.

The proposed 2026/2027 water transfer program may transfer up to 250,000 acre-feet through “groundwater substitution and/or stored reservoir release actions” by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation (Bureau) and water districts with the majority of the water coming from north of the Delta.1 The plaintiff‟s petition states: “The Addendum fails CEQA in numerous, independent, and overlapping respects: the Project‟s reliance on it is unlawful; it employs an improper review tier; its mitigation measures are deferred, unenforceable, and weaker than those of the prior environmental impact report (EIR) without justification; the environmental analysis of biological resources, land subsidence, and water quality is inadequate and unsupported; required analyses of alternatives, cumulative impacts, Indian Trust Assets and environmental justice are wholly absent; and changed circumstances and new information regarding threatened and endangered species require supplemental environmental review.”

AquAlliance‟s Executive Director, Barbara Vlamis, explained, “The agency and the Bureau have tried for almost two decades to extract more water from northern California for mostly agricultural buyers south of the Delta with junior claims to water. Water transfers once involved more land fallowing in the Sacramento Valley that caused impacts to local economies, but the lust for ever more water expanded to include groundwater substitution transfers that have harmed groundwater dependent farmers, communities, local streams, ecosystems, wildlife, and the very structure of the aquifer basins through land collapse (subsidence). AquAlliance was formed to combat these abuses.”

Dante John Nomellini, Manager and Counsel for the Central Delta Water Agency, explains “‘This is just another effort by the federal water exporters and the State and Federal agencies to circumvent the promises including those of the Bureau of Reclamation and law for protection of the watersheds of origin ‘that no water will be diverted which will be needed for the full development of all the irrigable lands within the watershed, nor will there be water needed for municipal and industrial purposes or future maintenance of fish and wildlife resources.’”

“This perfunctory environmental document is a fig leaf for a bankrupt water budget,” asserted Chris Shutes, Executive Director of California Sportfishing Protection Alliance. “Draining the aquifers of the Sacramento Valley to fill the insatiable demand for water in the San Joaquin Valley makes no more sense than catching the last salmon to prolong the life of the fishing industry.”

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Contacts:
Barbara Vlamis, AquAlliance: (530) 895-9420
Chris Shutes, CSPA: (510) 421-2405
Pat Soluri, attorney for CDWA: (916) 455-7300