News and Important Developments

From the LA Times

With attacks on the lowly delta smelt, Trump and the GOP launch baseless claims about fire and water

Pity the poor delta smelt.

The tiny fish, which seldom grows to more than four inches or lives longer than a year, was once abundant in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. It was an important link in the delta food chain, and valued as a food fish by local residents at least through the 1920s.

By the mid-1980s, however, the delta smelt was on the road to extinction, the victim of numerous changes in its habitat. Water diversions from the delta to farms in Northern California and residential users in the south depleted water flows.

One of the most reviled fish in the West

— Ecologist Peter Moyle on the delta smelt

The huge state and federal pumps in the delta sucked in the fish, further threatening the species’ survival. Invasive species such as the overbite clam consumed the zooplankton on which juvenile smelt had fed, toxic chemicals in farm runoff fouled the waters.

Now the delta smelt is functionally extinct in the wild, the species preserved only through a state and federal hatchery program, the success of which is uncertain. California environmental authorities have detected no wild smelt in the delta since 2017.

None of that has immunized the lowly smelt from its most obdurate enemy: partisan folly.

The Southern California wildfires have generated billows of noxious smoke coming from Donald Trump and his GOP sycophants, who claim that efforts to protect the smelt from extinction have complicated firefighting efforts by diverting water that could have been used to extinguish the blazes.

In a Truth Social post, Trump accused Gov. Gavin Newsom (whom he addressed with an infantile insult) of wanting to “protect an essentially worthless fish called a smelt.”

Bizarrely, Trump stated that Newsom wanted to protect the smelt by “giving it less water;” possibly he meant “more water,” since increasing water flows would be the instrument of environmental protection for the delta smelt, but who knows?

Right-wingers again demonize the tiny delta smelt to protect Big Agriculture

Aug. 12, 2019

“The delta smelt is standing in the way of getting desperately needed water to a number of parts of California,” Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) pontificated on television last week. “The fact that California’s own leadership is steadfast in protecting the delta smelt above everything else shows just how ridiculous their priorities are.”

The delta smelt has been called a “sentinel species,” meaning that its health signals the condition of its ecosystem — and the signal it has flashed is alarming. (Think of it as a canary in the environmental coal mine.)

It’s also a signal of another kind: Claims that the fish has anything to do with the fires indicates a speaker’s surpassing ignorance about water, the environment, global warming and wildfire management.

Indeed, Trump is so profoundly uninformed that he doesn’t seem aware that pumping more water from Northern California south to quell the Los Angeles fires would actually harm the Central Valley growers whose interests he has long claimed to support — it’s water they rely on that would be diverted south.

This isn’t the first time that partisans have asserted that protecting the delta smelt is an obstacle to efficient water management in California.

The smelt has been “one of the most reviled fish in the West,” Peter B. Moyle, an emeritus professor at UC Davis who has been the leading expert on the species, wrote in 2018.

During the drought of 2012-16, Moyle noted, “presidential candidates, sitting members of the House and Senate, and a cast of political pundits routinely urged abandonment of all protection for Delta Smelt, typically citing the small size of the fish in relation to the outsized demand for water for farming.”

Demonizing the delta smelt was — and is — a way to make facile points to uninformed voters by suggesting that the interests of what appears to be an unimportant fish are somehow elevated above those of human residents.

California’s salmon industry fears it will be wiped out by Trump

Aug. 3, 2018

The mantra articulated by Trump and his followers has been that California has wastefully sent its freshwater to the ocean merely to protect the fish.

“To protect smelt from water pumps, government regulators have flushed 1.4 trillion gallons of water into the San Francisco Bay since 2008,” the Wall Street Journal reported in a spectacularly uninformed column in 2015 that libeled the fish as “the cause célèbre of environmentalists and bête noire of parched farmers.”

The truth, however, is that keeping freshwater flowing from Northern California rivers through the delta and out to the ocean is crucial for the protection not only of the smelt, but other species such as Chinook salmon, shad, striped bass and steelhead trout, some of which are the focus of commercial fisheries.

Moreover, as I’ve written before, diverting too much freshwater before it gets to the delta to serve downstream farms and urban users allows more brackish water to infiltrate deeper into the delta. The increase in salinity can ruin agricultural productivity. The diversions advocated by Trump, in other words, would damage a farm economy already struggling with a decline in water quality.

These conditions are not new. They can be traced in part to the federal Central Valley Project, an irrigation scheme that originated in the 1930s, and the construction of the State Water Project in the 1960s and 1970s. The goal of both projects was to transfer water from rivers in Northern California to users around the state.

from California Water Blog

Over 100 organizations join together to urge California state leaders to maintain and defend environmental protections

Over 100 organizations joined together in sending an urgent letter to Governor Gavin Newsom, Attorney General Rob Bonta, Speaker of the Assembly Robert Rivas and Senate President Pro Tempore Mike McGuire to ensure protecting California’s environment remains top priority. In the letter written by Defenders of Wildlife, the signatories have requested a meeting with California leaders to sustain the state’s long-standing commitment to improving water management and environmental protection.

In addition to requesting a meeting with state leadership, the letter asks California leaders to:

Address concerns over President Trump’s executive orders impacting California’s environmental policies.
Make a strong public statement committing to defend California’s environmental laws, waterways and natural resources, and people — including the iconic Bay-Delta estuary and the communities it supports — from the dangerous anti-environmental agenda of the Trump Administration.
Highlight risks to water quality, wildlife and the fishing industry from potential changes to state protections.
Consider policy changes to counteract the impact of freezing federal funding and to strengthen laws like the California Endangered Species Act and the Porter-Cologne Water Quality Control Act.
Advocate for defending federal protections for public lands, waters, and wildlife.

Feb 2025

From LA Times

Criticism flows after Trump’s water release order

Early Friday morning, two dams in Tulare County started sending massive amounts of water down river channels toward the San Joaquin Valley.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers turned on the tap after a recent executive order by President Trump, who has railed against California’s water management policies.

“Federal records show that more than 2 billion gallons were released from the reservoirs over three days,” my colleague Ian James reported Monday. “The action occurred after Trump’s visit to fire-devastated Los Angeles, when he pledged to ‘open up the valves’ to bring the region more water — even though reservoirs that supply Southern California’s cities were at record levels (and remain so).”

Local water managers say they were caught off-guard by the decision when they were informed just a day before the water started flowing. They scrambled to alert local farming communities downstream about the potential for flooding. Due to those risks, local officials were able to persuade corps officials to reduce the amount of water initially planned for release.

The three-day water dump “has led to criticism from some residents, water managers and members of Congress, who say the unusual discharge of water seems to have been intended to make a political statement — to demonstrate that Trump has the authority to order federal dams or pumps to send more water flowing as he directs,” Ian wrote.

Trump’s water dump stems from a misunderstanding of California’s water systems, experts say.

The president has repeatedly asserted that the local water supply problems that hampered firefighting efforts during last month’s devastating L.A. fires were connected to state water management policies he opposes.

“I only wish they listened to me six years ago,” Trump posted on X last week. “There would have been no fire!”

An Army Corps of Engineers spokesperson told Ian and fellow Times reporter Jessica Garrison that water was released “to ensure California has water available to respond to the wildfires.”

State officials and experts say that’s not how our water works; regional reservoirs in Southern California are at record-high levels, they said.

According to CalFire, the only active fire in the state (as of Monday) is the Palisades fire, which is 100% contained.

And given that the first of three atmospheric rivers is expected to arrive this week and douse the region, it’s unclear what role river water that drains into the Tulare Lake Basin, roughly 150 miles north of Pacific Palisades, would play — or how (or if) federal officials intended to get it to L.A

So where did those billions of gallons of water end up?

Ian traced its path:

“Coursing from rivers to canals to irrigation ditches, much of the water eventually made its way to retention basins, where it soaked into the ground, replenishing groundwater.”

Tom Barcellos, a farmer who is president of the Lower Tule River Irrigation District, told Ian the amount discharged was equivalent to about two days of maximum water use during the summer irrigation season.

For Peter Gleick, a water scientist and senior fellow at the Pacific Institute, Trump’s actions amounted to wasting billions of gallons of water “for a political photo op and a social media post.”

“[The water will] not be used or usable for firefighting, not be used by farmers since this isn’t the irrigation season, and won’t be saved for the dry season, which is coming,” Gleick told Ian.

And despite Trump’s claims that the “beautiful, clean water” will flow to farmers in desperate need of it, Dan Vink, former general manager of the Lower Tule River Irrigation District, told Ian and Jessica that the president’s order will mean less water when those fields need it the most.

“This is going to hurt farmers,” Vink said. “This takes water out of their summer irrigation portfolio.”

Trump’s order and the corps’ response also drew criticism from several state leaders, including Democratic Sen. Alex Padilla, who demanded answers in a letter to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.

“Unscheduled water releases require close coordination with local officials and safety personnel, as well as downstream agricultural water users, in order to reduce flood risks to communities and farms,” Padilla wrote. “Based on the urgent concerns I have heard from my constituents, as well as recent reporting, it appears that gravely insufficient notification was given, recklessly endangering residents downstream.”

February 2022

Climate crisis and systemic inequities drive push to reform California water laws

By Ian James LA Times Staff Writer

California’s mountain snowpack is shrinking, and climate change is intensifying the severe drought. Streams have dwindled and reservoirs have declined as vast quantities of water are diverted for farms and cities. Endangered fish are struggling to survive. And in farming areas in the Central Valley, hundreds of families are struggling with dry wells as groundwater levels continue to drop.

A group of prominent legal experts has presented a blueprint for updating California’s system of water laws to fix long-standing weaknesses and adapt to the worsening effects of climate change. They say their proposals, if adopted by the Legislature, would help the state better manage surface water and groundwater, protect vulnerable communities and ecosystems, and improve state oversight of the water rights system.

The group presented their 11 proposals this month, saying the reforms would represent a major revision of laws that govern diversions from streams and rivers, and would give state officials better tools to deal with mounting strains on the state water system.

“California’s water laws, they were adopted a long time ago ... in a California that was a very different place,” said Holly Doremus, a UC Berkeley law professor who was part of the group.

“It’s past time to take a broad look,” Doremus said. “Climate change makes the situation that much more acute.”

The group recommended changing state law so that decisions about water rights, including approvals of new diversions from streams and rivers, would require regulators to consider the effects of climate change. With the heating of the planet bringing more extreme droughts, the legal experts said there is an urgent need to change how California administers water rights, and to start monitoring in real time how much water is taken from rivers.

They called for measures to protect vulnerable Californians in low-income rural communities, who have unsafe contaminants in their tap water or wells that are at risk of running dry.

The group urged the Legislature to require completion of a long-delayed water-quality plan to protect threatened fish in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, the heart of the state’s water system. And they said the state needs to change the rules governing water releases from dams so that agencies must consider not only the flows that fish need but also the water temperatures — because warmer temperatures have taken a worsening toll on endangered salmon and other species.

“We are in a time of crisis. We have a climate crisis, we have wildfire crisis, and we have droughts intensifying over time,” said Jennifer Harder, a member of the group and a law professor at University of the Pacific’s McGeorge School of Law.

Climate & Environment

Despite California groundwater law, aquifers keep dropping in a ‘race to the bottom’

Harder and other lawyers in the group said they expect to face resistance but hope the unrelenting drought may help build support for changing California’s water laws. The group said in a 43-page report detailing their recommendations that they’re suggesting a “focused approach to updating existing laws, regulations, and funding.”

They recently presented their recommendations during a webinar organized by the Planning and Conservation League. The Sacramento organization convened the group more than a year ago to consider proposals for modernizing California water laws.

“This is not our report, but we do agree with its recommendations,” said Jonas Minton, senior water policy advisor for the Planning and Conservation League. He said there have been warnings for years that people will suffer from climate change in the future, but Californians are already seeing the water rights system “fail for disadvantaged communities, the environment, farms and our cities.”

Under the current system, the State Water Resources Control Board considers historical stream flow data in decisions about water rights permits, but that “is no longer defensible” as climate change leaves less flowing in watersheds, said Clifford Lee, a former state deputy attorney general who was one of the report’s authors.

“Climate change will result in less precipitation as snow; shift peak runoff from historical patterns to earlier portions of the year; shorten the precipitation season; and increase the intensity and frequency of drought,” Lee said. “There simply will be less water in the future.”

He said relying on historical water data to estimate future flows is the “Waiting for Godot fallacy.”

“As you all know, from the Samuel Beckett play, Godot never arrives,” Lee said. “And that is the problem with using historical data to determine future flow. The flow is not going to arrive.”

The last two years have been some of the driest on record in California, and extreme heat has compounded the problems by baking soils, increasing evaporation, and reducing flows in streams and rivers.

An unusually wet December blanketed the Sierra Nevada in heavy snow, but the snowpack shrank during an extremely dry January, and now stands at 79% of average for this time of year.

The water levels in California’s largest reservoirs remain far below average. And if March doesn’t bring wetter conditions, the state appears headed for another long summer of drought.

To better prepare for extremes, Lee said, climate effects must be incorporated into the water rights permitting process by requiring that any analysis of whether water is available be based on science that estimates likely future flows. The state should also adopt this approach, he said, in managing existing water rights.

Among its recommendations, the group said the state needs better water data. Lee said it’s astounding that California, the land of high technology and home of Silicon Valley, “lacks the ability on a real-time basis to determine who is diverting water from surface water sources, when such diversions are occurring, in what amounts.”

Under existing law, the state requires only that diverters report how much they used in the previous year.

“So basically, during the drought, the state is flying blind. We do not know who’s taking water,” Lee said. “It’s extremely important to get a handle on a real-time basis during drought.”

The lawyers recommended that California initially start real-time monitoring of diversions in at least two watersheds, then consider whether to expand tracking to other areas.

Another problem with the current system, they said, is that the state water board is unable to investigate the water rights of some of the state’s major water users — the most senior rights holders with pre-1914 claims — to determine whether they are valid, or whether some water users might be taking more than they should.

They recommended giving the state water board new authority to selectively investigate these water rights claims. Lee said this change would align California with other western states and make for a “more unified water rights system.”

Other members of the group included law professors from UC Davis and Stanford University, as well as former state water board member Tam Doduc.

The group proposed some changes aimed at addressing widespread problems of contaminated drinking water. Harder pointed out that an estimated 1 million Californians, including many in low-income communities of color, do not have access to safe drinking water. Many rely on household wells or small water systems where the water is contaminated with chemicals or naturally occurring pollutants such as arsenic.

“Many of these communities are historically underserved minority populations that have been subject to explicit and implicit racism in the delivery of services including water,” Harder said.

Harder said she and others in the group believe California water law should correct these systemic inequities and protect disadvantaged communities.

State legislators in 2012 passed a law recognizing access to clean water as a human right, and have since approved funding to pay for fixes in communities where the tap water isn’t safe to drink. The group recommended the state start requiring that at least one member of the state water board — and each regional water quality board — have experience working on environmental justice issues.

Other proposals focus on the continuing problem of wells going dry as heavy groundwater pumping in farming areas causes declines in aquifer levels. According to state data, more than 3,700 dry household wells have been reported since 2013, and the number of dry wells has risen dramatically over the last year. The state received reports of 975 household wells that ran dry in 2021, many in farming areas in the Central Valley.

The group called for measures to protect homeowners struggling with dry wells while the state gradually implements regulation under its 2014 groundwater law, the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act, which requires local agencies to develop plans to eliminate problems of chronic overpumping.

They suggested the state require local groundwater agencies to determine whether pumping will probably cause more wells to fail, and to ensure protections for people who depend on wells by deepening or repairing their wells if needed, or connecting their homes to new water pipes.

The state Department of Water Resources recently reviewed plans submitted by local groundwater agencies and told agencies in farming areas across the San Joaquin Valley that their plans are “incomplete” and will require changes to address widespread risks of more wells going dry, as well as other problems. The local agencies will have six months to revise their plans. If they fail to address the criticisms, state regulators could deem their plans “inadequate,” which would trigger intervention by the state water board.

Other proposals by the group focus on addressing threats to fish that are struggling to survive. The experts said the state water board should adopt long-delayed updates to the state’s Bay-Delta Water Quality Control Plan by the end of 2023.

They said the board also shouldn’t approve any new water rights permits or extensions in the watershed until the final plan is adopted.

“In light of the fish crisis in California and the state’s clear authority to address that crisis, the failure to get revised fishery flow objectives across the finish line, for whatever reasons, is an unacceptable public policy failure,” Harder said. “The group’s sense was that the fish don’t have time to wait longer for further delays.”

Harder noted that many of California’s surviving fish species are struggling, and some are at risk of extinction. Endangered winter-run Chinook in the Sacramento River, for example, have suffered major losses in drought years, in part because of warmer water temperatures.

The group said because cold water is vital for salmon, state law should be amended to require agencies that manage dams to ensure not only sufficient flows but also water temperatures cool enough to protect fish.

The report’s authors said they hope state legislators will take up their proposals and introduce bills.

The project followed a similar effort in 1977-78 by the Governor’s Commission to Review California Water Rights Law, created by then-Gov. Jerry Brown. Some of that commission’s recommendations were subsequently adopted, while others — such as managing groundwater — failed to gain traction for years.

If the Legislature were to adopt the full slate of proposals, the authors believe, the reforms would represent the most significant changes to California’s surface water laws since 1913.

Doremus said these proposals aren’t intended to be a complete list of needed upgrades, but rather a start to “move the system in the right direction” and make it work better for the 21st century.

October 2021

The Delta – Where do we go from here?

by Tom Cannon

The Delta is still here, albeit not what it used to be. Yes, the Delta smelt are gone, the striped bass are at historic lows, and largemouth bass and bluegill abound. Plankton densities are way down and their species-composition is highly altered. Waters are warmer and saltier, and less turbid in dry-year summers. Invasive aquatic plants are taking over. Tidal flows now dominate over river inflows and Delta outflows. Winter flushes still occur in odd years, but droughts predominate. Climate change, heavy water use, and pollution have taken a toll. But the Delta is still home to a vast array of native fish and other aquatic organisms, and remains a seasonal critical rearing and migrating habitat of endangered salmon, steelhead, sturgeon, lamprey, and smelt. So what does the future have in store for the Delta, and how can we influence the outcome, especially for the aquatic ecosystem and its fish community?

To me, it has always been a simple solution involving the following array of strategic actions, although they are a very hard sale. I have seen little progress and further damage to the Delta in my nearly 50 years working on the Delta issues, because of uncertainties and high costs, slow planning processes, and oh so many delays.

Stop exporting from the south Delta. Most of the water supply comes in from the north, so why pull it through and export it from the south? It has always been the main problem.
Cut back on taking water from the Delta. Projects take a quarter of inflow and other users take another quarter or more (Figures 1 and 2). In early June 2021, just 2000 cfs was reaching the Bay, out of 6000 cfs of Delta inflows.
The Delta needs more inflow in most years. The Delta is too warm in summer (Figure 3), and now more prone to blue-green algae blooms. Inflow from the San Joaquin is especially important to the Delta ecosystem.
The Delta needs more nutrients to produce more plankton and benthos; it lacks nutrients because nutrients and aquatic productivity are exported/diverted and replaced by reservoir water that is very low in nutrients and productivity.
The low salinity zone should be located west of the Delta in the cooler eastern Bay where it can be more productive – more outflow is needed. This is especially important in spring of dry years (Figure 4), when low outflow results in the low-salinity zone being located in the Delta.
Invasive aquatic plants should be cut back as much as possible – this will help improve plankton, lesson water clarity, lower water temperature, and reduce habitat of non-native fishes.
The biomass and productivity of non-native fishes should be reduced by whatever means possible.
Pollutant inputs to the Delta should be minimized. Herbicides and pesticides and other pollutants inputs are too high.
Ship-channel dredging and shoreline-shoal habitat degradation should be lessened.
The tidal-prism should be increased with expansion of flow-through Delta tidal channels. Avoid shallow floodplain enhancements that increase water temperatures.
Restore Delta channel riparian habitats to increase shoreline protection, provide shade, and increase aquatic and terrestrial food for fish.
Release hatchery-raised delta smelt in optimal habitats in the Delta to reduce the imminent threat of their extinction.

There are more planning and restoration efforts today than 50 years ago. So much more information is available. It should not be this hard.

July 2021

Experimental Habitats for Hatchery Delta Smelt

Re-establishing Delta smelt in its native Delta using hatchery smelt is an extremely difficult task, given how completely the habitat has been altered (Stompe et al 2001). Releasing fish directly into the wild is very risky and success will be hard to determine. Alternative projects need to be developed to spread risk. The Polder Pond Project proposed here is one such project. It proposes to rear Delta smelt in large ponds on a Delta island, on natural foods, which should prepare the fish better, at larger sizes, for release into the wild. The project also entails some risk for the Delta smelt needed for the project (ca. 2,000/year) but even if the smelt fail to adapt well to the ponds, useful information will be obtained on restoring native fishes to the Delta.

June 2021

It’s Some of America’s Richest Farmland. But What Is It Without Water?

A California farmer decides it makes better business sense to sell his water than to grow rice. An almond farmer considers uprooting his trees to put up solar panels. Drought is transforming the state, with broad consequences for the food supply.

In America’s fruit and nut basket, water is now the most precious crop of all.

It explains why, amid a historic drought parching much of the American West, a grower of premium sushi rice has concluded that it makes better business sense to sell the water he would have used to grow rice than to actually grow rice. Or why a melon farmer has left a third of his fields fallow. Or why a large landholder farther south is thinking of planting a solar array on his fields rather than the thirsty almonds that delivered steady profit for years.

These are among the signs of a huge transformation up and down California’s Central Valley, the country’s most lucrative agricultural belt, as it confronts both an exceptional drought and the consequences of years of pumping far too much water out of its aquifers. Across the state, reservoir levels are dropping and electric grids are at risk if hydroelectric dams don’t get enough water to produce power.

California’s fertile Central Valley begins in the north, where the water begins. In normal times, winter rain and spring snowmelt swell the Sacramento River, nourishing one of the country’s most important rice belts. On an average year, growers around the Sacramento River produce 500,000 acres of sticky, medium-grain rice vital to sushi. Some 40 percent is exported to Asia.

But these are not normal times. There’s less snowpack, and, this year, much less water in the reservoirs and rivers that ultimately irrigate fields, provide spawning places for fish and supply drinking water for 39 million Californians.