This week various Sacramento River Basin water suppliers were compelled to intervene in a federal court lawsuit filed by the State of California against the federal agencies that recently adopted the federal Biological Opinions (2019 BiOps) regarding the coordinated long-term operations of the Central Valley Project (CVP) and the State Water Project (SWP). Many of these same water suppliers had previously intervened in a separate federal court lawsuit filed by certain fishery industry groups and environmental organizations in December 2019 challenging those same BiOps.
The Northern California Water Association and the various Sacramento River Basin water suppliers (collectively, NCWA) have been deeply disappointed with the State of California’s decision to resort to litigation against the BiOps. In this regard, the new 2019 BiOps contain several provisions specific to the Sacramento River Basin that focus on modified temperature management on the American and Sacramento Rivers for salmon and steelhead. Importantly, the new 2019 BiOps will provide better cold-water pool management for incubating salmon than the previous BiOps, which will benefit salmon in many years. The 2019 BiOps will also accelerate restoration on Battle Creek for salmon. In addition, there has been tremendous progress made over the past year on the 2019 BiOps, Voluntary Agreements and implementing the recovery plan for salmon that suggest a new way forward for California to improve conditions for fish and wildlife while maintaining important water supplies for cities, rural communities and farms. This includes various Early Implementation Projects in the Sacramento River Basin.
This is not a time for creating binaries or partisan acrimony on water in California. We strongly encourage the State of California to withdraw its lawsuit against the 2019 BiOps and instead resume working collaboratively with federal agencies to (i) coordinate operations of the state and federal water projects, (ii) implement important and practical fish and wildlife provisions in both the BiOps and Incidental Take Permit (ITP), and (iii) collaborate with our local agencies to advance the Voluntary Agreements.
We encourage parties to return to the solution table rather than being compelled to participate in potentially drawn-out litigation filed by the state that will only divide us, and not make any progress towards nor help water supply reliability for fish, wildlife, cities, rural communities or farms.
Importantly, in Northern California we believe that both the federal and state agencies have advanced important efforts for all of California. This includes:
- The 2019 BiOps adopted by the federal agencies as a better approach to improve flows and habitat for fish and wildlife, recognizing that the approach in the previous BiOps did not work well for fish, wildlife, cities or farms.
- Many elements of the Voluntary Agreement framework proposal recently announced by the state agencies as a more comprehensive, effective and immediate solution to the vexing challenges in California’s Bay-Delta watershed than the traditional regulatory approaches.
We have described this progress in more detail in: Facts and Questions: BiOps, Voluntary Agreements and Recovery Planning for Fish and Wildlife, The Sacramento River Basin.
NCWA remains fully committed to the major efforts underway to improve conditions for fish and wildlife, while maintaining important supplies for cities, rural communities and farms. This multi-benefit water management in the Sacramento River Basin will help implement the 2019 BiOps, Voluntary Agreements, the recovery plan for endangered salmon and efforts to improve habitat for the Pacific Flyway. A major part of all these efforts will involve reactivating our floodplains for the benefit of all these programs. NCWA hopes that the State of California will join NCWA and other solution-oriented stakeholders and collaborate in all of these critical efforts.
Voluntary Agreements between agencies and water “providers” [users] to provide a minimum amount of ecosystem water/habitat while ignoring the need to reduce demand by early retirement of Western San Joaquin/Tulare Basin desert importers is a recipe for the extermination of key components of Sac Valley/Delta ecosystems. The State Water Board, through its implementation of TUCPs (Temporary Urgency Change Petitions) to waive water quality requirements results in crashing fish populations. The need to honor the “co-equal” goals and the intention to reduce reliance on Delta exports is belied by both Voluntary Agreements and TUCPs. If State water marketers succeed in converting Sac Valley aquifers into intentionally drained water “bank$” California will crash along with the Central Valley ecological health.