California’s contentious and long-debated plan to replumb the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta and pump more water south finally has a price tag: about $20 billion. 

The new estimate for the Delta tunnel project — which would transform the massive water system that sends Northern California water south to farms and cities — is $4 billion higher than a 2020 estimate, largely because of inflation.

Included is almost $1.2 billion to offset local harms and environmental damage, such as impacts on salmon and rare fish that state officials have called “potentially significant.”

The goal of the project is to collect and deliver more water to two-thirds of California’s population and 750,000 acres of farmland during wet periods, shore up supplies against the threats of climate change and protect the system from earthquakes.

But environmental groups and many Delta residents have long warned that the tunnel could put the imperiled Delta ecosystem at even greater risk, sapping freshwater flows needed for fish, farms and communities in the region. 

The tunnel has been the focus of intense debate in California for more than 60 years. It’s the epicenter of water wars that have pitted Delta locals, environmentalists, tribes and the fishing industry against state officials and water agencies that supply cities and farms, mostly in Southern California.

The new report from the state Department of Water Resources comes as state water regulators weigh competing rescue plans for a region they have described as “in crisis” and in the midst of an “ecosystem collapse.” 

Gov. Gavin Newsom backs the proposed project, calling it his “number one climate resilience program” and saying he hopes to get it permitted before he leaves office. The 45-mile tunnel would transport water from the Sacramento River around the Delta to a reservoir near Livermore, the first stop on the 444-mile California Aqueduct.

The new estimate and report will help water suppliers in Southern California, the Central Coast and the Bay Area weigh whether it’s cost effective for them to buy the tunnel’s water. The state would issue revenue bonds to fund the project, then suppliers would have to pay back the costs. 

Water agencies, such as the giant Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, are expected to have all of the information they need to decide by the end of 2026, said Karla Nemeth, director of the Department of Water Resources, which operates the state’s massive water system.

“The questions are how can this project be implemented, what kind of assurances can we have in the resilience it provides to the Delta and our water supply future, and at what price?” Adel Hagekhalil, general manager of the Metropolitan Water District, said in a statement. He said the cost estimate  “brings us closer to understanding that equation.” 

Building the tunnel could take until at least 2044, with construction expected to start around 2029 and last roughly 15 years. 

Had the tunnel been in place this year, it could have funneled 909,000 additional acre-feet of water south from intakes in the north Delta, according to state water officials. That’s nearly enough water to fill Folsom Lake, and could supply more than 9.5 million people for a year. 

The total benefits of the project — calculated at around $38 billion — far outweigh the costs, according to the report, with every dollar spent expected to reap $2.20 in benefits. “In other words, doing nothing is more expensive,” said David Sunding, a UC Berkeley emeritus professor of environmental economics who led the cost-benefit analysis.

Sunding said water deliveries from the tunnel would cost about $1,325 per acre-foot — less than the average cost for water generated by desalination, recycling and stormwater capture. 

Peter Gleick, co-founder of the Pacific Institute, a global water think-tank, said he has serious concerns about the analysis and whether it accounts for the real costs of construction and water treatment and distribution. He called for “far more and better” economic and environmental assessments. 

“This project gets more expensive every single time a new version is proposed, and this type of project has never been brought to completion under budget,” he said. “Water conservation and efficiency improvements are far cheaper than the Delta project.” 

One major benefit to a tunnel, Sunding said, is earthquake preparedness for the state’s water delivery system, which is crossed by the major Hayward and San Andreas faults. A catastrophic earthquake that crumbles levees could interrupt water deliveries for nearly seven months and degrade water quality for almost another year. Sunding said the tunnel would, ideally, allow water deliveries to continue in some form after quakes, or at least protect water quality.

The tunnel could also increase water exports from the Sacramento River when pumping from the south Delta is limited to protect threatened and endangered species, Nemeth said. Thousands of threatened steelhead trout and endangered winter-run Chinook salmon have died this year from the pumping, according to state and federal estimates.

But conservationists warn that a tunnel wouldn’t reduce the risk to fish: The existing pumps would still be operational — posing a continued threat to protected species. Environmental groups and fishing organizations have sued over the project, saying adding the tunnel would further reduce freshwater flows — increasing salt levels and harmful algal blooms, and harming native fish. 

Tribes and environmental justice organizations also oppose the state’s application for a change in water rights to build and operate the tunnel. “The injurious impacts of mismanagement in the Bay-Delta can no longer be endured by Tribes and Delta communities,” Malissa Tayaba, vice chair of the Shingle Springs Band of Miwok Indians, said in a statement. 

Jon Rosenfield, science director of San Francisco Baykeeper, called it “just the latest version of a plain old water grab.” 

The state’s own environmental analysis warned two years ago that the tunnel could harm endangered and threatened fish, including the Delta smelt, winter-run chinook salmon and steelhead trout. Changes to flows at the intakes or downstream, for instance, could reduce migration, damage habitat and expose salmon and other native fish to more predators. 

The analysis calls for thousands of acres of wetland restoration to offset the “potentially significant impacts” — projects that critics say have historically been slow and inefficient in California. 

The Delta watershed supports about 80% of the state’s commercial salmon fishery, which was cancelled this year for the second time in a row because of plummeting populations. 

“What better way to address declining salmon populations than by draining their homes?” Scott Artis, executive director of the Golden State Salmon Association, said in a recent statement. “Bravo, Governor, for turning healthy rivers and estuaries into a punchline that harms tens of thousands of families, businesses and employees across California and Oregon.”

CalMatters is a public interest journalism venture committed to explaining how California’s state Capitol works and why it matters.

In a devastating blow to California’s fishing industry, federal fishery managers unanimously voted today to cancel all commercial and recreational salmon fishing off the coast of California for the second year in a row. 

The decision is designed to protect California’s dwindling salmon populations after drought and water diversions left river flows too warm and sluggish for the state’s iconic Chinook salmon to thrive. 

Salmon abundance forecasts for the year “are just too low,” Marci Yaremko, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife’s appointee to the Pacific Fishery Management Council, said last week. “While the rainfall and the snowpacks have improved, the stocks and their habitats just need another year to recover.”

State and federal agencies are now expected to implement the closures for ocean fishing. Had the season not been in question again this year, recreational boats would likely already be fishing off the coast of California, while the commercial season typically runs from May through October. 

In addition, the California Fish and Game Commission will decide next month whether to cancel inland salmon fishing in California rivers this summer and fall.

The closure means that California restaurants and consumers will have to look elsewhere for salmon, in a major blow to an industry estimated in previous years to be worth roughly half a billion dollars. 

“It’s catastrophic,” said Tommy “TF” Graham, a commercial fisherman based in Bodega Bay who now drives a truck delivering frozen and farmed salmon and other fish. “It means another summer of being forced to do something you don’t want to do, instead of doing something you love.

About 213,600 Sacramento River fall-run salmon — a mainstay of the fishery — are estimated to be swimming off the coast. Though that’s an improvement over last year, the forecast remains the second-lowest on record since the fishery was closed in 2008 and 2009, Yaremko told the Pacific fishery council.

The numbers this year, plus the fact that the forecasts for salmon returning to spawn are routinely overestimated, “add concern,” Yaremko said. 

Many in the fishing industry say they support the closure, but urged state and federal officials to do more to improve conditions in the rivers salmon rely on. Fishing advocates and environmentalists have lambasted Gov. Gavin Newsom’s administration for failing to prioritize water quality and flows to protect salmon in the vital Bay-Delta watershed.  

“Our fishing fleets and coastal communities can not be the only ones making sacrifices to save these fish,” said Sarah Bates, who owns a commercial fishing boat called the Bounty, berthed at Fisherman’s Wharf in San Francisco. “Water policy needs to take the health of our river ecosystems seriously.” 

The closure comes as the fishing industry still awaits disaster aid promised from last year’s salmon fishery closures, which state officials estimated to have cost about $45 million. The fishing industry says that’s a vast underestimate. 

“Some fishermen have already lost their businesses and many will in the coming months,” said RJ Waldron, who runs a charter fishing business out of the East Bay. Last year’s closure dried up his customers, and he put his sportfishing boat up for sale months ago. 

“My dream of being a charter boat owner is very much a nightmare now.”

CalMatters is a public interest journalism venture committed to explaining how California’s state Capitol works and why it matters. 

California, Nevada and Arizona’s historic pact to cut their use of the Colorado River’s overtapped supplies should be enough to keep the basin’s massive reservoirs from hitting dangerously low levels — for now at least. 

With the release of its revised environmental assessment this week, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation is poised to move forward with the three-state plan to give up about 13% of water they receive from the Colorado River through the end of 2026. Next comes 45 days of public comment on the assessment, which is expected to be finalized in early 2024. 

At stake is a water supply for 40 million people, seven states, 30 federally recognized Tribal Nations, and 5.5 million acres of agriculture. A combination of an ample Rocky Mountain snowpack, wet weather and the states’ planned cuts averted imminent declines that could have threatened water deliveries and power production, federal officials say. But they warned that long-term threats to the vital supply remain. 

“The Colorado River Basin’s reservoirs, including its two largest storage reservoirs, Lake Powell and Lake Mead, remain at historically low levels,” U.S. Bureau of Reclamation commissioner Camille Calimlim Touton said in a statement on Wednesday. “Today’s advancement protects the system in the near-term while we continue to develop long-term, sustainable plans to combat the climate-driven realities facing the Basin.” 

It’s a major milestone for fraught negotiations that began in the summer of 2022, as a megadrought parched the already-overdrafted Colorado River and federal officials called for massive cuts to water use. 

The Colorado River basin states squared off. Deadlines came and went, the states failed to cut a deal, the federal government threatened its own cuts, and a wet winter granted a temporary reprieve to a vital water source in crisis. 

In May of 2023, California, Nevada and Arizona reached an agreement: Together, they would cut their water use by at least 3 million acre-feet through the end of 2026 in exchange for compensation for farmers and other water users. It’s enough water to supply 9 million households for a year. 

Mark Gold, director of water scarcity solutions with the Natural Resources Defense Council, called these cutbacks modest, and said the bureau’s positive assessment was “akin to them calling for a fair catch after the states punted on making the cuts needed to protect the Colorado and build back storage in Lake Mead.”

“The last 23 years of drought in the Basin have demonstrated that even modest cuts in water allocations are not enough to build climate resilience into the system,” Gold said. 

What exactly the plan means for California, though, remains to be seen. Last year, the state committed to conserving 400,000 acre-feet of water per year through the end of 2026 — about 9% of the state’s yearly allocation of 4.4 million acre-feet.  

“How we get there is a little soft right now, but we will get there,” said Bill Hasencamp, manager of Colorado River resources for the Southern California water import giant, the Metropolitan Water District. “It’s just we don’t have firm numbers from each agency.” 

Growers in the Imperial Valley are expected to weather the bulk of California’s cuts. But the three-page plan that the three states released in May remains light on details. 

Much hinges on funding from the federal government, which set aside $4.6 billion on measures to tackle drought across the West through the Inflation Reduction Act. But the amount going to Colorado River users still hasn’t been finalized, with most in California still awaiting final contracts to fund conservation programs. 

Now, even before plans for the next three years are locked in, attention is shifting to how to manage the Colorado River’s water long term, after key agreements expire at the end of 2026. That, said Jay Weiner, an attorney representing the Fort Yuma Quechan Indian Tribe that borders California, Arizona and Mexico, “is now really the big enchilada.”

Here’s what to know. 

A Tipping Point Delayed, But Not Avoided

Last summer, U.S. Bureau of Reclamation Commissioner Camille Calimlim Touton warned that the basin of the iconic Colorado River, which flows through the Grand Canyon, was “approaching a tipping point.” 

With a decades-long megadrought parching the region, the basin’s massive reservoirs Lake Powell and Lake Mead — the largest in the country — had reached historically low levels. Touton called on the seven basin states to cut their water use by about 2 to 4 million acre-feet per year — more than 7 times the amount Nevada receives in a year. 

As the states haggled over a deal and the federal government proposed its own cuts, nature intervened. 

Now Lake Powell is 37% full, and Lake Mead 34% — after having fallen to a quarter of their capacity this time last year.

“This deserves a big whoop dee doo dah,” agreed Brad Udall, senior water and climate research scientist at Colorado State University. “It buys us some time, but it doesn’t solve any of the overarching problems we have. The reservoirs are still really, really low.” 

The Bureau of Reclamation reported that the chances of the reservoirs dropping to critically low levels has dropped to 8% at Lake Powell and 4% at Lake Mead through 2026. 

“However, elevations in these reservoirs remain historically low and conservation measures like those outlined by (California, Arizona and Nevada’s proposal) will still be necessary to ensure continued water delivery to communities and to protect the long-term sustainability of the Colorado River System,” a bureau statement said. 

Demand has long outpaced the river’s supplies, and flows are projected to continue dwindling — reduced by increased temperatures and dry soils that drink up critical runoff as climate change fuels the long-term drying of the region. 

The 3 million acre-feet of water that California, Arizona and Nevada have pledged to conserve through the end of 2026 should be enough for now, Udall said. The states have reported record conservation collectively anticipated to reach more than 1 million acre-feet by the end of year, aided by wet weather and plentiful supplies from Northern California reservoirs.  

But Udall and other experts agree that more durable cuts will be needed to protect supplies long term. 

“I think we’ll get to 2026 without any undue panic about the level of the reservoirs, but wow, this system continues to throw us big years followed by lots of dry years,” Udall said. “And that’s been part of the problem.”

Avoiding the Fallowing Option in Imperial Valley

The lower basin states’ plan calls on the federal government to compensate growers and other water users to conserve water in order to achieve three-quarters of the promised cuts. The rest would either be paid for locally or by the state, or go uncompensated. 

But contracts are still in the works, including for farmers in the Imperial Valley — the biggest Colorado River water users in the state. 

The Imperial Irrigation District is entitled to more than two-thirds of the state’s allocation from the Colorado River. Most of the water supplies half a million acres of alfalfa, grasses, wheat, winter vegetables and other crops as well as a handful of communities in the southeast corner of the state. 

The district initially pledged 1 million acre-feet in conservation by the end of 2026, contingent on federal money and growers voluntarily conserving. But without finalized funding, and as growers faced deadlines to make crop decisions and renew leases, that number has declined,  according to water department manager Tina Shields.  

A year later, the 1 million acre-foot pledge has dropped to 800,000. “That’s still within reach. But the longer it takes to check off all of those boxes in order to get started, then that number gets smaller.” Shields said. “There’s certain windows that, as we miss them, the potential for our conservation declines.” 

Possible measures include amping up incentives for conservation on farms, such as by switching to drip irrigation or leveling fields to slow the flow of irrigation water. Another strategy is to compensate growers of certain crops like alfalfa for pausing summertime irrigation for periods of 45 to 60 days — stressing the crop, but not killing it, Shields said. 

The goal is to avoid a full fallowing program. “Politically, I always call it the ‘F-word’ down here,” Shields said. “It’s just not something we want to do to our community unless we have to.”

‘An awkward place right now’

The rest of California’s cuts will come from Coachella Valley Water District, Bard Water District, Fort Yuma Quechan Indian Tribe, Palo Verde Irrigation District, and the Metropolitan Water District, which delivers imported water to 19 million people in six Southern California counties. 

Coachella Valley Water District has already struck a deal with the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation. The water district receives 444,000 acre-feet of Colorado River water — about 10% of the state’s allocation — every year to irrigate crops and golf courses, and to refill groundwater stores that supply drinking water to about 270,000 people mostly in Riverside County. 

Under the agreement, the district will forgo about 35,000 acre-feet a year for three years that would otherwise be used to refill groundwater stores — leaving the water in Lake Mead instead. The federal government will reimburse $400 for every acre-foot. 

But reducing groundwater replenishment can only be a temporary measure, said spokesperson Lorraine Garcia. She said the district hopes that other conservation programs they have requested funding for — including fallowing and irrigating crops with recycled water — will help offset the drain on groundwater stores. 

Still awaiting deals are the Fort Yuma Quechan Indian Tribe, whose reservation spans the Colorado River, and the Palo Verde Irrigation District, headquartered in Blythe. 

“We’re in kind of an awkward place right now because we’ve already started fallowing, assuming we would have a contract with the feds,” said Dana “Bart” Fisher, president of the Palo Verde Irrigation District’s board of trustees and a farmer who grows melons and winter vegetables. “I’m certain we’re going to end up with a contract. It’s just happening at a much slower pace than we ever anticipated.” 

Metropolitan Water District will be the backstop ensuring that the state meets its 1.6 million acre-foot target, said Metropolitan’s Hasencamp. But he said he doesn’t anticipate any impacts for residents in the coming years. 

Between the wet year, water conservation, and the highest water allocation from Northern California reservoirs since 2006, the district is on track to store roughly 300,000 acre-feet of water in Lake Mead this year and has pledged to keep it there through 2027, Hasencamp said. 

“It’s like an IRA with a penalty for early withdrawal, but we’re not going to withdraw it early,” Hasencamp said. “We’re ahead of the game already.” 

‘There’s Going to Be Pain’

After 2026, a whole host of agreements governing reservoir operations, drought shortage plans, and international agreements with Mexico are set to expire. Basin states and the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation are gearing up to craft replacement guidelines that could shape water management in the basin for decades. 

The current guidelines, the bureau wrote in the Federal Register, are not “sufficiently protective of the resources dependent on the Colorado River,” and new ones must better address tribal interests and the long-term drying of the basin. 

The update will take years, with a final environmental assessment expected in late 2025 and a decision in early 2026. And California water users are preparing for even more challenging negotiations ahead. 

“There’s going to be pain associated with the new post-2026 guidelines,” said Fisher. The Colorado River’s supply is notoriously over-allocated, and there are few other sources of water in the desert. 

“You start getting into emotional territory, where people are unwilling to give up their rights but recognize that they must conserve something,” Fisher said. “It’s a delicate dance that the states are going to have to conduct.” 

Metropolitan’s Hasencamp said it will be critical for the states to reach an agreement on long-term operations and not let fighting force the courts or Congress to intervene. 

“It’s always hard when the pie is shrinking, and you have to figure out how are we going to live with less water? And who’s going to step up? And how are we going to fund it?” he said. “We’d much rather have the seven states and the water users in the states chart our future.” 

CalMatters is a public interest journalism venture committed to explaining how California’s state Capitol works and why it matters.

California officials have agreed to extend operations at three natural gas generating stations on the Southern California coast in an effort to shore up California’s straining power grid and avoid rolling blackouts.

The controversial and unanimous vote on Aug. 15 that keeps the plants open came from the State Water Resources Control Board, which oversees the phaseout of natural gas facilities that suck in seawater and kill marine life.

Seawater-cooled units at three power plants in Long Beach, Huntington Beach and Oxnard will be kept in reserve for three more years to feed energy into the state’s grid during power emergencies, such as the 10-day heatwave last August and September that led to statewide power alerts. The plants had been slated to cease operations of those units by the end of 2020, but received a three-year extension amid rolling blackouts that summer. 

Now that extension has been extended again — through 2026. A fourth, the Scattergood Generating Station in Playa Del Rey, will receive a five-year extension to fill regional supply gaps though 2029. 

The decision about the fossil fuel plants comes despite the state’s mandate for 100% renewable and zero-carbon electricity by 2045. 

Natural gas power plants are a large source of greenhouse gases, which warm the planet, toxic gases like ammonia and formaldehyde, and nitrogen oxides, which contribute to Southern California’s extreme smog. Nationally, these plants account for about a third of all carbon emissions from energy production.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom last year called for state agencies such as the Department of Water Resources to prop up the grid — including with fossil fuels, which drew the ire of environmentalists and nearby communities. 

The state agreed to pay the plants’ operating companies about $1.2 billion from 2024 through the end of 2026 to stand by during energy events, such as heatwaves.

“These resources would only be turned on to address extreme events or for maintenance runs” at the direction of the state’s grid operator, said Delphine Hou, deputy director of the Department of Water Resources, at a meeting of the California Energy Commission last week. 

The decision outraged many local residents, especially those in the largely Latino community of Oxnard, where many work outdoors in farm fields. The city supported the previous extension with the understanding that the plant’s owner would pay up to $25 million to demolish it. 

After the vote, several angry people yelled at the water board members, “You failed our community.”

During the five-hour session that drew more than 60 people commenting, Kyle De La Torre, an Oxnard resident with the Central Coast Alliance United for a Sustainable Economy, urged the board to reject the extension. He said the smell is so strong that he gets a migraine when he passes the plant and worries about a school and homes nearby. 

“When it comes to keeping the power plant, please don’t see us as just a number, or just a location on a map. We are humans just like you are. We deserve a safe and clear and clean environment just like you do,” he said.

Dave Shukla, co-founder of the Long Beach Alliance for Clean Energy, said he lives near the AES Alamitos plant. “I have wasted countless hours of my life over the past 25 years to cleaning up the dark soot that this plant emits directly onto our home,” he said. 

Water board staff acknowledged that those living near the plants will continue to experience “air, noise, and aesthetic impacts.”

But Hou told the energy commission last week that because the seawater-cooling plants won’t be operating on “a day-to-day basis like they are today, it’s very likely there’ll be a reduction in air emissions and once-through cooling water use,” which is the process of sucking in large volumes of seawater that kills fish and other marine life. The state policy phasing out the process dates back to 2010.

Newer generating units at the Huntington Beach and Long Beach plants use alternative cooling technologies, instead of seawater, so they are not subject to the phaseout. They would have remained operating regardless of today’s vote, since they are under contract for another 17.5 years — and not just for emergency use, according to AES.

Mark Miller, AES’s general manager for facilities, including the Alamitos and Huntington Beach plants, said the the company “invests significant capital each year to ensure that our facilities are maintained at a state of readiness to safely serve local and system reliability needs” and that the plants’ contributions to pollution in the Los Angeles basin are “overwhelmingly dwarfed” by vehicles and other industries.

Eric Watts, chief commercial officer for GenOn, which owns and operates the Ormond Beach Generating Station in Oxnard, said the extensions “are necessary to protect grid reliability in the coming years.” 

But whether the plants are capable of assisting the grid during extreme power events is controversial. During rolling blackouts in 2020, natural gas plants struggled in the heat, “resulting in power loss in combustion turbines, inlet air and cooling system stresses, steam tube leaks, and condenser pump failures,” the California Energy Commission reported.

In August 2022 “gas plants failed to perform at their expected capacity during the heatwave, while significantly increasing the pollution burden for local communities,” according to a report by a consulting firm commissioned by Regenerate California, a coalition of environmental organizations.

The findings call “into question the strategy of relying on gas generation as we experience more extreme weather, and as our understanding of its pollution and public health risks grows,” the report says.

The plants will be folded into a new state electricity reserve program, created by an energy deal that the Newsom administration and lawmakers cut last summer. Lawmakers called the deal “rushed” and “lousy” at the time, and environmentalists lambasted Newsom for leaning on fossil fuels as the state reels from one greenhouse gas-fueled disaster to another. 

State Sen. Henry Stern, a Democrat from Calabasas, said he helped negotiate the deal yet apologized because fossil fuels are supposed to be a last resort. 

“We keep head-faking communities and promising them just one more extension, just one more time — but actually, the economic structure we’re building here is designed to be a much more permanent reserve,” he said. “I’m hoping we can find a way to restore that trust. To say…is this the last time?”

Board chair Joaquin Esquivel expressed sympathy to those living near the plants and  frustration with the position the water board had been put in. “I’ve heard a lot of common agreement around the need to decommission and move on from these plants. But…this board is not established to have the expertise to second guess all of our energy agencies” about the need to keep them open, he said.

CalMatters is a public interest journalism venture committed to explaining how California’s state Capitol works and why it matters.

The California Coastal Commission has approved another desalination plant, despite citing its high costs, risks to Monterey Bay’s environment and “the most significant environmental justice issues” the commission has faced in recent years. 

The commission’s divided, 8-to-2 vote came Thursday night after 13 hours of debate at a Salinas public hearing packed with several hundred people, plus more crammed into overflow space. Many of the 375 who signed up to speak opposed the project — some in tears.

Much of the debate focused on the fairness of locating a for-profit company’s facility in the Monterey County city of Marina — which does not need the water and is home to designated disadvantaged neighborhoods. The expensive supply will flow to other communities, including the whiter, wealthy enclaves of Carmel-by-the-Sea, Pacific Grove and Pebble Beach. 

“It’s our city, our water, our beaches, our wildlife — so that Cal-Am can send the water to another wealthier community who don’t even want it,” Marina Mayor Bruce Delgado told commissioners, his voice breaking. 

California American Water, the nation’s largest publicly traded water and wastewater company, plans to build the plant to pump ocean water, desalinate it and provide drinking water to 100,000 people on the Monterey Peninsula. The largely Latino, agricultural community of Castroville would also receive the water at a discount. 

Today, nine years after the project was first proposed, commissioners approved the plant along with a long list of conditions aimed at limiting the harm to dunes and wetlands, groundwater stores and local communities. The company must still obtain an array of local, state and federal permits, and resolve a court battle over groundwater rights before construction could begin.

Coastal Commission staff warned that the plant would require overriding parts of the state’s Coastal Act, and would have “substantial impacts” to sensitive habitat areas for threatened and endangered species such as the Western snowy plover, which nests in dunes there.

The approval is a pivot from the staff’s 2020 recommendation to reject the company’s proposal to build a larger plant. Since then, California has faced its driest three-year stretch on record, and a fourth drought year is looming, making the need for new drinking water supplies more urgent.

The decision pits environmental justice concerns and ecological impacts against the precarious water supply of the Monterey Peninsula, which does not receive imported water and relies instead on over-pumped groundwater, the overtaxed Carmel River and highly-treated wastewater. Parts of the peninsula have been under a moratorium for new water connections for longer than a decade. 

“There’s just too much uncertainty regarding the future of the water supply in this region,” Coastal Commission Executive Director Jack Ainsworth said at the hearing. “History will judge us harshly if we do not take a precautionary approach on water supplies in this community.”

But Commissioner Linda Escalante, one of the two voices of dissent, said she could not support the project because of the “overwhelming uncertainty of need, cost and feasibility.”

The plant would produce about 4.8 million gallons of water per day when it begins operating, with the possibility of increasing production later. California American Water hopes to have it operating by the end of 2027. The water company is seeking to bolster local supplies after state regulators ordered it to stop its decades-old practice of unlawfully diverting more than its share from the Carmel River.  

Supporters of the desalination project include Gov. Gavin Newsom, state water agencies and local businesses, with hotels and inns in the region writing letters of support, and some saying it would ease housing shortages in the region. 

“The Monterey Peninsula has been in dire need of additional drought-proof, reliable water supplies for over 25 years. There’s no time left to wait,” wrote Amy Herzog, executive director of Visit Carmel, in a letter to the commission.  

Newsom “supports the staff recommendation and appreciates their work to ensure the project protects the coastal environment and addresses environmental justice issues,” Newsom Communications Director Erin Mellon told CalMatters. 

But Coastal Commission staff acknowledged that even if the company meets the conditions, the environmental justice impacts remain in Marina and elsewhere.

“The simple fact the project is sited within a community that doesn’t want it and won’t benefit from it means that these impacts cannot be fully eliminated,” Kate Huckelbridge, a senior deputy director, told the commissioners.

Customers could face bill hikes of $50 per month, about a 50% increase over the average residential bill, California American Water estimates.

“If Cal Am is allowed to build their desal plant, and my water bill increases by 50%, I will have to choose between eating and buying water,” one commenter, Tammy Jennings, told commissioners, adding that even with the company’s low-income assistance program, the bill runs more than $40 a month. “No one should be allowed to make a profit on something we all need to live.”

California American Water proposed increasing its low-income discounts to 50% and expanding eligibility for its assistance program. But the commissioners at the last minute tonight added provisions ordering the company to improve plans for assisting low-income ratepayers and capping rate hikes at $10 a month for eligible customers.

Just before 10 p.m., after 13 hours, in an attempt to soften the blow, the commissioners also asked the company to pay $3 million to the city of Marina and fund a full-time employee to oversee a public access and amenities plan.

Residents and officials from Marina — where 62% of residents are people of color and the average annual income is under $33,000 — said the facility would add to their environmental burdens, which already include a Superfund site and landfill. 

They worry it would harm their shoreline and imperil precious groundwater supplies. Others questioned whether there is even a need for the water on the peninsula, given its high cost and efforts to expand local recycled water production.  

Delgado showed commissioners a picture of a rusted pipeline rising above sand dunes. “Would you want this on the beach that you go to? Is this what the Coastal Commission envisions?” 

The decision was closely watched as the state weighs how desalination will fit into its parched future. Currently four desalination plants provide drinking water in California.

The Coastal Commission staff in its support of the project cited “the increased pressure from the historic drought for new sources of water in a region already struggling with longstanding, critical water shortages.” Though recycled water provides a “feasible and less environmentally damaging alternative” in the near term, “staff concludes that the Project is needed in the longer term.” 

In May, the commissioners unanimously rejected another controversial plant proposed by developer Poseidon Water in Huntington Beach, citing environmental harms, high costs and lack of local demand. But a smaller, less-expensive plant proposed by a public water agency in Dana Point sailed through the approval process in October. 

The Monterey County plant brings the battle north. Its size more closely resembles the Dana Point plant and it, too, would suck water from beneath the sea floor, adding a buffer between the intakes and sea life. 

But instead of a public agency, a massive water utility would construct and operate the Monterey Bay plant. And it would produce the “most costly water of any of the desalination projects the Commission has considered recently,” staff wrote in their assessment. 

“The question I pose to the Commission today is how they want to be remembered,” California State University Monterey Bay graduate student Liz Smith said at the hearing. “You have a chance to stand against environmental injustice to stand beside the community and environment you claim to support and to be on the right side of history.” 

Endangered Species, Dunes and Groundwater at Risk

Home to charismatic sea otters and other marine creatures, Monterey Bay is highly prized and protected for its kelp forests and deep underwater canyons. The Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary reaches from north of the Golden Gate Bridge to Cambria, spanning a 4,601 square nautical mile stretch about the size of Connecticut. 

Constructing the well pads, an access road and part of the pipeline — plus ongoing maintenance — would disturb coastal dune habitat that still supports two dozen sensitive species despite a century of sand mining, commission staff reported.  

Nearby wetlands and vernal ponds, too, could see the groundwater beneath them drawn down by as much as four feet, according to an earlier independent review from the Coastal Commission. What’s unclear is how this would affect the wetlands: if they’re connected to the groundwater, “this amount of drawdown could cause adverse effects to up to several dozen acres of these important habitat areas,” the review says.

The commission tasked the company with keeping a close watch on how the wetlands respond to pumping, and developing a plan if they find any harm. Commissioners also responded to residents’ complaints by adding last-minute requirements for the company to prioritize purchasing other dune habitat in an effort to offset ecological harm.

It’s not enough, Delgado said. 

“The first thing that would happen is that those vernal pools and wetlands would dry up,” the mayor said. Only then would the monitoring “tell us what that cure is, somewhere down the road, someplace probably outside Marina.”

Supporters said a desalination plant could offset harm to the Carmel River, which California American Water has been illegally pumping from in excess of its water right for decades. 

DJ Moore, an attorney representing California American Water, said the company has shrunk the footprint of permanently fenced area on the shore to 7,400 square feet. Staff said the company’s plans to use tunneling techniques for pipelines would also reduce harm to sensitive ecosystems. 

Even more controversial is how the facility could affect local groundwater supplies, which Marina relies on for drinking water. 

The wells would stretch at least 1,000 feet seaward, from a former sand mining facility in Marina on the shore of Monterey Bay to suck in water from beneath the sea floor, and then pipe it to a new treatment facility adjacent to an existing wastewater plant. The leftover brine would be co-mingled with the wastewater and discharged about two miles offshore in the National Marine Sanctuary. 

In addition to seawater, the wells will pull “some percentage of water from nearby aquifers,” said Tom Luster, the Coastal Commission’s senior environmental scientist. That groundwater must be returned to the basin in the form of discounted supplies for Castroville.

Marina officials and residents have raised concerns that the wells could degrade their own groundwater stores and cause saltwater to seep into the aquifer. 

Previous reviews found “limited to negligible” effects on seawater intrusion and that the plant’s capture area “would likely not extend to near the City’s wells.” The Marina Coastal Water District, which contests that assessment, is embroiled in a court battle with the company over its rights to pump groundwater.

Coastal commission staff acknowledged the uncertainties and the severe consequences if desalination did harm local groundwater supplies. 

“We took the precautionary approach of requiring a very robust groundwater monitoring plan … meant to be an early warning system,” Huckelbridge said. 

Costs could ‘Burden Low-Income Ratepayers’

Costs of construction remain unknown because the company says it is waiting for the commission’s approval before bidding the construction and material costs. But the company’s previous estimate is around $330 million; the Monterey Peninsula Water Management District estimates more than $420 million. 

The desalinated water could cost more than $6,000 per acre-foot. The estimated 50% increase in rates will “disproportionately burden low-income ratepayers in the service area and residents in the City of Marina,” according to commission staff.

Eric Tynan, general manager of the Castroville Community Services District, whose groundwater supplies are already tainted by seawater, supports the project and the discounted water supplies it would bring. 

“Castroville really needs it. We’re the canary in the coal mine. And this has been a slow moving trainwreck coming at us,” Tynan said.

Others questioned the need for the pricey water, particularly given efforts by Pure Water Monterey to recycle more water.  

“It’s more than enough water for thirty-plus years, so you don’t need a desal plant today,” David Stoldt, general manager of the Monterey Peninsula Water Management District, which is tasked with managing the region’s ground and surface water supplies, told CalMatters. 

“You don’t go to your most expensive, most environmentally harmful project first. You go there last.” 

CalMatters is a public interest journalism venture committed to explaining how California’s state Capitol works and why it matters.

Facing demands from the federal government, California water agencies offered Thursday to cut back the amount of water they import from the Colorado River starting in 2023.

After months of negotiations, water agencies wrote to federal agencies offering to reduce California’s water use by 400,000 acre-feet every year through 2026. That amounts to 9% of the river’s water that California is entitled to under its senior rights.

Most of California’s Colorado River water goes to the Imperial Irrigation District, serving nearly half a million acres of farmland in the southeast corner of the state. The district offered to cut 250,000 acre feet, although its offer is contingent on federal funding and the voluntary participation of their water users.

Other recipients are the Metropolitan Water District, which imports water for 19 million people in Southern California, the Coachella Valley Water District and the Palo Verde Irrigation District, which all signed on to today’s letter. 

The Colorado River basin has been gripped by drought for more than two decades, with its massive reservoirs dipping to historic lows. But California, which draws more water from the river than any other state, has so far dodged 2023 curtailments that were announced for Arizona, Nevada and Mexico. 

Today’s offer doesn’t constitute a deal with the other basin states. But it’s the first offer the California water agencies have publicly announced since U.S. Bureau of Reclamation Commissioner Camille Calimlim Touton issued a warning to the states: Come up with a plan to conserve between 2 million and 4 million acre-feet in 2023 within 60 days or face federally mandated cuts. 

Touton’s 60-day deadline passed without a deal or federally mandated cuts. At the end of September, the U.S. Department of the Interior said it would work to ensure that lower basin states — California, Arizona and Nevada — continued working towards an agreement. 

Whether California’s offer will be enough to satisfy the other states remains to be seen. John Entsminger, general manager of the Southern Nevada Water Authority, said in August that the negotiations had produced “exactly nothing in terms of meaningful collective action to help forestall the looming crisis.” 

And U.S. Rep. Greg Stanton, a Democrat from Phoenix, told California Gov. Gavin Newsom last month that “California has ignored this urgent call and failed to offer any significant contributions to protect the system to date.” 

California’s reduced use will depend on federal funds from the Inflation Reduction Act and other programs, the water agencies wrote in their letter to the Interior Department and Bureau of Reclamation today.

“We’re waiting on the Bureau of Reclamation to provide some details on how that funding will be appropriated, and to what types of programs or actions,” said Antonio Ortega, a spokesperson for the Imperial Irrigation District. 

The agencies also said the offer is contingent on “a clear federal commitment” to help stabilize the Imperial Valley’s Salton Sea, which has been receding as growers conserve water. The salty body of water, which was formed by flows from the Colorado River, is home to fish and migratory birds.

“This commitment is contingent upon appropriate funding, voluntary participation from the Imperial Irrigation District’s water users, and necessary environmental permitting, in part,”  general manager Henry Martinez said in an emailed statement.

CalMatters is a public interest journalism venture committed to explaining how California’s state Capitol works and why it matters.

As California’s 2022 water year ended this week, the parched state is bracing for another dry year — its fourth in a row.

So far, in California’s recorded history, six previous droughts have lasted four or more years,  two of them in the past 35 years. 

Despite some rain in September, weather watchers expect a hot and dry fall, and warn that this winter could bring warm temperatures and below-average precipitation. 

Conditions are shaping up to be a “recipe for drought”: a La Niña climate pattern plus warm temperatures in the Western Tropical Pacific that could mean critical rain and snowstorms miss California, according to Daniel Swain, a climate scientist with UCLA and The Nature Conservancy. 

Swain said California’s fate will depend on how exactly the storm track shifts, and that seasonal forecasts are inherently uncertain. Even so, “I would still put my money on dry, even in the northern third of the state,” he said. “It’s not a guarantee. But if you were to see 50 winters like this one, most of them would be dry.” 

Through August, no other three-year period in California history has been this dry — even during the last historic drought from 2012 through 2016. 

“Or did the last drought end? Which is the bigger question,” said John Abatzoglou, a professor of climatology at UC Merced. “We’re basically having droughts that are disrupted by wet periods.”  

California has seen lengthy droughts before, including two seven-year droughts that started in the late 1920s and 1940s. A more recent one lasted six years, from 1987 to 1992. 

“To get these kinds of years, we have to go back to the late 1920s and the 1930s, which were the Dust Bowl years,” said California state climatologist Michael Anderson. He tallies far more dry years than wet since the turn of the millennium. “If you look at the 21st century, we really only have a handful of wet years to work with.” 

It’s not just the lack of rain and snow. Warmer temperatures, too, are exacerbating California’s droughts. January through August ranked as California’s fifth warmest year to date, following 2021’s warmest summer on record. 

“One thing that is unfortunately becoming easier to anticipate are warmer than average conditions due to climate change,” Swain said. 

The heat contributes to a thirstier atmosphere, plants and soils, which increases demand and reduces runoff that flows into reservoirs. “That’s taking what’s already been a really rotten, worst-in-the-instrumental-record precipitation drought, and making it into even a worse drought,” Abatzoglou said. 

Will it Rain This Winter?

What the coming water year, which begins Oct. 1, will bring is still up in the air. But La Niña conditions are highly likely to continue through at least the fall, with an 80% chance of persisting through January, for a third year in a row. 

A “three-peat” La Niña is rare: It has happened only twice before since record-keeping began. La Niña occurs when ocean temperatures in the Eastern Tropical Pacific are below normal, which can shift the storm track that California depends on. 

“Seeing things that we’ve never seen before is very much on the table,” said John Yarbrough, assistant deputy director of the State Water Project, which funnels water from Northern California to 27 million people and 750,000 acres of farmland.

Often La Niña means drier conditions in Southern California, but the effects on Northern California watersheds critical to the state’s water supply can be harder to predict, according to Julie Kalansky, deputy director of the Center for Western Weather and Water Extremes at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. 

“Every year is such a unique story for water, which makes California exciting, but it also makes it hard to predict and say what will happen,” Kalansky said. 

What will ultimately shape the next water year is the number of storms known as atmospheric rivers that make landfall, and the amount of precipitation they unleash. The timing, too, will be important, Anderson said: when rain and snow falls can affect how much of California’s precious snowpack rushes into reservoirs or soaks into the soil. 

“From the water management standpoint, we’re being mindful that it very well could be dry,”  Yarbrough said. “At the same time, we’ve got to be mindful that it could be very wet and you could have flooding. Both of those still are possible.”

Dry spells punctuated by wet years are part of “the California story,” Abazoglou said. “But obviously the last decade has shifted the balance towards more droughts.”

What About Winter Snow?

Snow, too, is difficult to predict for the year ahead. 

“It’s definitely more of a guessing game. You’re just sort of crossing your fingers and hoping,” said Michael Reitzell, president of Ski California, a trade association representing resorts in Nevada and California. 

This past year was a strange one for the ski industry, he said — marred first by wildfires that damaged the Sierra-at-Tahoe resort, then by extreme snowstorms at the end of December that forced some resorts to close. 

“In the holiday period, some resorts lost full days that would have been huge, huge revenue days,” Reitzell said. “That certainly does put a ding in things.” 

This year’s snowpack measured at 38% of average statewide, at a time when it should have been its deepest on April 1. It was the worst snowpack in seven years and the sixth lowest April measurement in state history. The 2015 snowpack was the lowest on record. 

The measurement came on the heels of a record-setting dry spell from January through March, with warm temperatures spurring an early season melt. This kind of early melt is difficult to recover from, said Andrew Schwartz, lead scientist and station manager at the University of California, Berkeley’s Central Sierra Snow Lab.

“Our soils get dry and soak up any additional rain or snow that comes in, so that doesn’t make it to our reservoirs. And then we get these mass forest die-offs and subsequent forest fires,” Schwartz said. 

He agreed it’s hard to say what La Niña will mean for the Sierra Nevada this winter. He said “some absolutely massive snow years” have happened during La Niña years. 

“But we’ve also had some of the worst years on record happen here. So the La Niña doesn’t look like it’s going to play too much of a role up here, because traditionally it hasn’t,” he said. “With that being said, I’m expecting drier and warmer than average conditions.” 

A Deep Water Deficit

California is entering the next year with a water deficit unlikely to recover with an average year of precipitation. 

Groundwater levels in almost two-thirds of wells assessed have sunk below average, and by the end of August, reservoir storage had hit 69% of normal for the date. It’s an improvement over last year, when reservoir levels had dropped to just 60% of average for the date.

But reservoirs are still not where they need to be. “We’re still well-below average, still well-below where we would like to be,” Yarbrough said.

Lake Oroville, at 1.24 million acre feet, remains below the 1.6 million acre-foot threshold that managers would like to see by the end of the year before considering exports. Last year, deliveries from the State Water Project dropped to 5% of requested supplies in March. 

Initial water allocations are expected to be announced Dec. 1, and Yarbrough would not say what they were likely to be. Still, he said, “Do expect it to be on the lower end.” 

The US Bureau of Reclamation, which operates the Central Valley Project, also would not say how much water its recipients, including Central Valley growers, can expect next year. That announcement will come in February, spokesperson Mary Lee Knecht said. 

But Ryan Jacobsen, CEO of the Fresno County Farm Bureau, is not expecting the news to be good. 

“We find ourselves going into this year with such a substantial decline over the course of the previous three years that even an average year most likely is going to mean some not good allocations to farmers down here in the Valley,” he said. 

Jacobsen said local growers already have cut back on plantings for fall and winter crops. He expects even more fields to be fallowed as farmers decide not to plant annual crops like tomatoes, melons and corn to preserve their scarce water supplies for permanent crops like tree nuts and grapes. 

One source of California’s water supply is in even more dire shape than in previous droughts: the Colorado River, which remained a reliable source of water supply even during California’s 2012 through 2016 drought. This time the river’s massive reservoirs have hit historic lows. 

“The Colorado River system is in deep crisis,” said Alex Hall, a professor of atmospheric and oceanic sciences at UCLA. “That means Southern California is in a more difficult position than in the past.”

Southern California’s giant water importer, the Metropolitan Water District, issued unprecedented outdoor watering restrictions last spring for the 6 million people in its vast service area that depend on supplies from the parched State Water Project. Over the last three years, the water district has received its lowest total deliveries from Northern California reservoirs. 

Now, the water importer is weighing how potential future cutbacks on the Colorado River could affect the rest of its customers as California, Arizona and Nevada hash out a deal to conserve the river’s water, said Demetri Polyzos, Metropolitan’s manager of resource planning.

“People are saying ‘Hey, we’ve gone through this before. California is used to droughts,’”  Polyzos said. “That is true. But we’re seeing these things get a lot worse and worse and more difficult to manage through.” 

What is becoming increasingly clear is that the nature of drought in the West is changing from the plural to the singular as it endures for long stretches punctuated by brief spells of wet years. 

“The idea of drought as a temporary, transient thing is shifting,” Swain said. “We should be thinking more about long-term aridification.” 

CalMatters is a public interest journalism venture committed to explaining how California’s state Capitol works and why it matters.

California lawmakers punted on a proposal to rein in agricultural groundwater pumping as drought continues to grip California and more than a thousand domestic wells have run dry.  

A bill by Assemblymember Steve Bennett, a Democrat from Santa Barbara, would have added hurdles to obtain a permit to drill an agricultural well.

Though the bill cleared the Senate on Monday, Bennett elected to not bring it up for a final vote in the Assembly before the Legislative session timed out Wednesday night. He said California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office told him the bill was no longer viable because of changes made. 

During one of the driest years in recent history, California legislators did not pass any new laws that would boost the water supply or protect groundwater from overpumping, although funds were included in the budget for groundwater management and programs like water recycling. 

The bill would have been the biggest change to California’s groundwater management since the state’s landmark Sustainable Groundwater Management Act was enacted in 2014, during the height of the last drought, said Roger Dickinson, a former Democratic assemblymember from Sacramento and one of the authors. 

Over the past five years — well after passage of the act — more than 6,750 new irrigation wells have been drilled. 

“We cannot succeed in reaching sustainability unless we are judicious about continuing to allow well drilling,” said Dickinson, now policy director for CivicWell, a nonprofit group promoting sustainable local policies.

If Bennett’s proposal had been approved, local groundwater management agencies, largely in the Central Valley, would have been required to weigh in on whether a new, enlarged or reactivated well would harm the local aquifer before a local government can grant a permit. The applicant also would have had to submit a study by an engineer or geologist confirming that the well is unlikely to interfere with nearby wells. 

The bill is aimed at agricultural wells. Household wells pumping less than two acre-feet a year and public water system wells are excluded.

The bill received little public discussion on the Senate floor before passing on Monday. But it underwent a heated discussion in the Assembly months before, with members from the Central Valley speaking in opposition.  

“Continuing to go forward with this kind of heavy-handed approach is simply bringing the day closer when those million acres of agriculture are fallowed, and literally thousands upon thousands of farm workers will be unemployed,” Assemblymember Jim Patterson, a Republican from Fresno, said in May. “The death knell of agriculture is but a few more votes like this away.” 

Assemblymember Adam Gray, a Democrat from Merced, said the bill would have “turned the process upside down and imposed a sweeping proclamation from Sacramento with zero consideration for local conditions.”

“Once again we saw a bill written and advocated for by people who aren’t from the Valley who think know what’s best for us,” he said in a statement Thursday.

Business and agricultural groups, including the California Chamber of Commerce and the California Farm Bureau Federation, opposed the bill, saying it would interfere with landowners’ rights to use groundwater and spur lawsuits over permitting decisions. 

Daniel Merkley, water resources director with the California Farm Bureau Federation, called the bill “premature” and “an overreach.” 

He said it could interfere with “what we’re trying to accomplish with our groundwater over the next number of years” and that it failed to address the diversity of California’s groundwater basins. 

“Some (basins) are in critical overdraft, some are being managed sustainably already. This bill created a uniform envelope over all of them,” he said.

Bennett said agriculture and business groups had rallied hard against the bill. But he attributed its ultimate death to amendments inserted by the Senate appropriations committee that weakened its provisions compared to an executive order that Newsom issued earlier this year. 

The amendments cut a requirement for permit applicants to show their wells would not increase land subsidence. Appropriations chair Anthony Portantino, a Democratic state senator from Glendale, did not respond to a request for comment. 

Newsom’s order — issued after a record-dry start to the year — temporarily bars local governments from issuing permits for wells deemed potentially harmful to nearby wells or that could cause subsidence that damages structures. 

“If that wouldn’t have happened, if we would have kept it as strong as the executive order, I’m confident the bill would be sitting on the governor’s desk and he would be signing it,” Bennett said. “But instead, we have to start all over again next year.”

Alex Stack, a spokesperson for Newsom, did not answer a question about what the governor’s office told Bennett about the bill.

“The (executive order) is important for conservation and sustainability purposes during this period of extreme and extended drought, and we will work with the Legislature and state agencies on any changes in law that might be helpful to putting the state on a path to navigating our hotter, drier future,” Stack said.  

More than 97% of the state is experiencing severe drought, and nearly 1,040 wells have run dry so far this year. 

The last time drought parched the state, lawmakers passed the groundwater law as agricultural overpumping spurred a rash of well outages in local communities. 

Local groundwater agencies in critically overdrafted basins, mostly in the San Joaquin Valley, the Central Coast and desert regions, are required to dial back the depletion and stop the consequences from worsening by 2040. Those in less depleted basins have until 2042. 

But groundwater levels are still declining, land subsidence continues and more wells were drilled in the 2021 water year than in any of the previous five years, a state report said. 

Bennett’s bill aimed to address a major groundwater disconnect between the local governments that grant drilling permits, and the local groundwater agencies tasked with managing aquifers. According to a bill analysis by an Assembly consultant, granting a well permit is often considered a “ministerial action” with “little or no personal judgment by the public official as to the wisdom or manner of carrying out the project.”

Dickinson said he had hoped when drafting the 2014 law that groundwater agencies and local governments would coordinate. “What we still see is both a failure because of, to a certain extent, the natural inertia of government on the one hand, and the grudging implementation of (the Act), on the other hand,” Dickinson said. 

Environmental and environmental justice groups supported the bill, including the Natural Resources Defense Council, Sierra Club California and Community Water Center because groundwater depletion threatens drinking water supplies. 

Bennett said he expects a run on permit applications if Newsom’s executive order expires before a bill is in place. 

“I’m really disappointed. And I’m very concerned that if something happens to the executive order, we will have a land rush on well permits,” he said. “But I’m not discouraged. We learned and we’re going to redouble our efforts.” 

CalMatters is a public interest journalism venture committed to explaining how California’s state Capitol works and why it matters.

California’s water agency has released a long-awaited environmental report outlining the details and impacts of a controversial proposal to replumb the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta and pump more water south.

In the report, made public Thursday, state officials said the tunnel project could harm endangered and threatened species, including the Delta smelt, winter-run chinook salmon and steelhead trout. To offset the “potentially significant impacts” on the rare fish, the Department of Water Resources says thousands of acres of other wetlands would have to be restored — which critics say is a slow and inefficient way to provide new habitat.

The draft environmental impact report is a major step in planning a tunnel that would fundamentally reshape California’s massive water management system. 

The report outlines the proposed path of a 45-mile tunnel that would pipe water from the Sacramento River, bypassing the Delta, and funnel it into Bethany Reservoir, the “first stop” on a state aqueduct that funnels water south. 

The goal of the project, which has been planned in various forms since the 1960s, is to shore up water supplies against environmental catastrophes such as earthquakes and the weather whiplash and sea level rise of climate change, according to California Natural Resources Secretary Wade Crowfoot.

Water agencies that can eventually sign on to receive the tunnel project’s water stretch from the Bay Area and Central Coast to the Central Valley and Southern California. 

“It is a conundrum to be able to manage the Delta in a way that protects the environment, respects the communities that live there, and provides for the water supplies of a large portion of the state,” Crowfoot said. 

The state’s companion explainer for the report, also released Thursday, says changes in flow at and downstream of the tunnel’s intakes “have the potential to decrease migration rates, alter migration routing, reduce availability of rearing habitat, and increase exposure to predation for winter-run Chinook salmon, Central Valley spring-run Chinook salmon, and Central Valley steelhead.”

Carrie Buckman, environmental program manager for the state’s Delta Conveyance Office, said the department’s analysis found that 4% fewer juvenile winter-run chinook would survive during their peak times in the Delta in below-normal water years. 

The summary also notes “potentially significant impacts to delta smelt and longfin smelt” because changes in Delta flow “could affect the species directly or indirectly through changes in factors such as food availability.” 

Environmentalists said the project would endanger salmon and other fish that already are in poor shape.

“We know that the status quo is really bad for fish and wildlife, but their own (environmental impact) document shows that the Delta tunnel will make things even worse,” said Doug Obegi, senior attorney at the Natural Resources Defense Council. “You could have a delta tunnel that was environmentally protective, at least in theory, but none of the ones that were proposed or analyzed in here even seem to pass that basic test.” 

Buckman said approximately 1,500 to 3,500 acres of wetlands would be restored to offset the environmental damage. 

“The restored habitat would be designed to look and function like tidal wetland habitats currently in the Delta, such as those on Liberty Island,” she said in an email. She added that habitat restoration deadlines will be tied to the project schedule and include provisions requiring restoration ahead of the impacts.  

Water experts and environmentalists question, however, whether restoring other wetlands would protect salmon and other fish. 

“The state has a bad track record of getting habitat mitigation completed,” said Greg Gartrell, a consultant and retired water manager from the Contra Costa Water District. “They’re very slow, and they’re very meticulous. But they get in their own way.”

A priority of Gov. Gavin Newsom, the effort has also drawn opposition from environmental groups and Delta residents, who worry that drawing freshwater away from the Delta coupled with years of construction will leave the region salty, stagnant and barren. 

“I fear that the Delta would eventually just become basically ghost towns,” Kathy Bunton, a Delta resident who owns Delta Kayak Adventures, told CalMatters last month. “It’s just heartbreaking.”

The 3,000 page draft lays out the potential operations of the tunnel routes and their environmental consequences. Alternate routes that were also considered would connect to an existing pumping plant in the south Delta. 

“This project is critical to ensuring Californians have access to high-quality, affordable and reliable water supplies amidst the growing impacts of climate change,” Jennifer Pierre, general manager of the State Water Contractors, an association of public water agencies, said in a statement.

The draft “clearly shows that the project has been downsized, refined and redesigned to avoid and reduce local impacts and address environmental concerns,” she said.

The long-awaited tunnel project has been at this point before: Another environmental impact report was finalized in 2016. Yet that project, a pair of tunnels, stumbled because of the high costs and eventually died when Newsom withdrew the administration’s support. 

Among other impacts of the tunnel are the removal of 71 structures, including 15 residences; the conversion of more than 2,300 acres of farmland considered to be of “statewide importance”; disruption to cultural and historic sites and resources; and construction noise. 

Planning, Building Tunnel Could Take Until 2040

The price tag hasn’t yet been updated but it would be in the billions. In 2020, one of the  alternate paths was estimated to cost just under $16 billion. The state plans to issue bonds to fund the final design and construction process; water agencies receiving the water will be required to pay the state back. 

Plans to replumb the Delta have been decades in the making, changing shape over time from a canal to twin tunnels to, eventually, a single tunnel that Newsom promoted when he took office. 

If eventually approved, the project would take decades more to complete. Californians will have 90 days to comment on the draft environmental impact report, one of the first steps in a permitting process that could last years. Construction, which is not expected to start before 2028, could take another 12 to 13 years to complete. 

Crowfoot said the state is moving as quickly as it can. But he said the state must be cautious because it’s likely to face lawsuits.

“The governor is committed to getting this project essentially in a place where it’s getting built by the end of this administration,” Crowfoot said. “It’s got any number of potential environmental litigants. We have to do what’s required under the law.”

The State Water Project supplies 27 million people and 750,000 acres of farmland — transporting water through the Delta south with pumps so powerful, they can make rivers run backward. 

CalMatters is a public interest journalism venture committed to explaining how California’s state Capitol works and why it matters.

Californians emerged from the driest January, February and March on record with the biggest jump in water use since the drought began: a nearly 19% increase in March compared to two years earlier. 

Despite the urgent pleas of water officials, California’s water use in March was the highest since 2015, standing in stark contrast to February, when residents and businesses used virtually the same amount of water in cities and towns as two years ago.

The massive increase shrank conservation gains since last summer, according to data released Tuesday by the State Water Resources Control Board: During the period from last July through March, Californians used 3.7% less water than during the same stretch in 2020. 

The latest data is a rebuke of California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s request last July that Californians voluntarily cut back their water use by 15%. At the end of March, he ordered water systems to step up their drought responses statewide, but left the details to the locals.

The largest increases, nearly 27%, came in the Los Angeles basin and San Diego County, as well as the desert regions of southeast California that include Palm Springs and the Imperial Valley. Residents and businesses in southern Sierra Nevada communities used about 23% more water than in 2020, and the Central Coast followed close behind with a 20% rise. The only savings came in the North Coast region, which used 4.3% less water. Even the San Francisco Bay Area had a 2.5% increase. 

While the data reflects water used by residents and industries statewide, it does not include agriculture, which accounts for roughly 40% of the total water used in the state. 
The record dry spell came during what should have been some of the wettest months of the year, so residents resorted to more watering of their lawns and gardens, which soak up about half of the water used in cities and towns.

Beginning next month, about 6 million Southern Californians who are reliant on the state’s parched aqueduct and reservoirs will face unprecedented water restrictions from the Metropolitan Water District. The agencies and cities that provide their water must limit residents to outdoor watering once a week or reduce total water use below a certain target under a mandate issued by the Metropolitan Water District last month.

In response, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power today announced that all of its nearly 4 million customers will be limited to watering twice a week beginning June 1.

By March, some residents already faced aggressive drought rules from their water suppliers — with mixed results. 

After San Jose residents failed to meet voluntary conservation targets, those who exceed mandatory limits now face surcharges. 

In Southern California, the Las Virgenes Municipal Water District, which serves wealthy enclaves west of Los Angeles, found that water use steadily increased despite restrictions, with about half of residents regularly exceeding their water budgets, said spokesperson Michael McNutt.

At the end of May, the state water board will consider rules to ban irrigation of non-functional, decorative turf at businesses and other institutions. It will also vote on regulations implementing Newsom’s executive order requiring water systems to escalate their drought responses. Nearly 230 water systems have yet to reach the level of drought response the governor ordered, according to state data released today.

CalMatters is a public interest journalism venture committed to explaining how California’s state Capitol works and why it matters.