SACRAMENTO, California – President Joe Biden and Gov. Gavin Newsom are racing to protect vulnerable Chinook salmon and Delta smelt in California’s main water supply ahead of a possible second Trump presidency.
Former President Donald Trump this year promised to send more water to drought-weary, Republican-leaning farmers if he is re-elected. Biden and Newsom are trying to thwart the move that could push endangered fish closer to extinction by revising Trump-era rules before the end of 2024.
The Biden administration is on track to incorporate more fish protections into the way state and federal officials operate the 400-mile-long array of reservoirs, pumps and canals that move water (and kill fish) across the state by 6 from December. according to a federal agency timeline obtained by POLITICO. The timeline leaves just two weeks for public review.
“We want to get this done at the end of this administration, and that’s the commitment we got,” Karla Nemeth, California’s water resources director, said in an interview.
Republicans are already reacting.
“Obviously, they are being rushed for political purposes,” the deputy said. David Valadao, a Republican from the wealthy farming district north of Bakersfield said in an interview. “They know it’s not going to be good. That’s why they’re being so secretive.”
Complaints from farmers in the conservative-leaning Central Valley about shortages of irrigation water, which often forces them to leave fields empty, have long fueled Republican debates. This year, limited water deliveries from state and federal governments despite the last two wet winters have given Trump additional fodder.
“They have a lot of water,” Trump said at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Maryland in February, recounting an interaction with an unnamed congressman from California: “I said, ‘I see there’s a drought.’ They said, ‘No, we don’t have a drought. We have so much water that you don’t know what to do. But they ship to the Pacific. We won’t let them get away with it any longer.”
For California’s top Democrats, water is a key front in their mission to “Trump-proof” environmental protections before the election. Newsom has built a national profile as Trump’s chief antagonist, who has made California a frequent target and angered his base against policies such as the nation’s leading electric vehicle mandates.
The division of supply to California’s main water supply hub, the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, is an eternal political football.
At stake are the decline in populations of endangered fish, such as Chinook salmon, which struggle in warm, slow-moving waters or become trapped in pumps, and the daily operations of a massive public plumbing system that captures water in the wettest part of the world. north of the country. the state will supply about 25 million taps for Californians and the nation’s largest producers of nuts, vegetables, fruits and beef.
Trump stayed true to a campaign promise when changed Obama-era rules to send more water to farmers four years ago, after hiring a powerful Central Valley grower lobbyist, David Bernhardt, as Interior secretary to oversee the effort. But environmental groups and the Newsom administration immediately sued. Since then, state and federal officials have had to adopt court-mandated temporary plans every year while they negotiate something more permanent.
Now, it’s the Biden administration’s turn to rewrite the rules, which both the California-run State Water Project and the federally run Central Valley Project follow in an effort to coordinate their joint operations.
Bureau of Reclamation spokeswoman Mary Lee Knecht said in an email that the anticipated federal listing of longfin smelled threatened and that the court-ordered interim plans ensure completion of the new rules on schedule.
For California, the advantage of having ready-made rules in hand is that they could help bolster its legal defense if Trump tries to redo them again, said California’s Nemeth.
“It’s important that they are complete,” she said.
She is also already considering how to build on California’s existing state protections, which go beyond federal ones.
“It seems likely that a different federal administration would reopen things and look again,” Nemeth said. “We would still have our California license, so he would become the driver.”
Meanwhile, California Republicans in Congress are seeking to codify Trump’s version of the rules. Valadão, also a dairy farmer, authored the language because Trump’s rules made it easier to send more water south, he said.
“I have farmers all over the Valley who are literally running out of water,” said Valadão. “It wasn’t a dramatic change, but it was a change in a positive direction for us.”
Supporters of the bill include the powerful Westlands Water District and other Central Valley irrigators, some of whom testified in support at a House Natural Resources Committee hearing in Tulare, California, last spring.
“It’s good public policy to support agricultural communities,” Westlands board director William Bourdeau, also executive vice president of nut, fruit and vegetable producer Harris Farms, said at the hearing. “It is in our national interest.”
The language was removed from the budget bill earlier this year, but Valadao said he would keep trying to pass it as an addendum — and could get a lot more help in a lame-duck session or if Republicans win Congress this fall.
The interim is don’t make anyone happy and puts Newsom and Biden in an awkward situation.
The turn of events, a sign of the intractability of California’s water wars as much as a sign of growing polarization, has exhausted farmers and environmentalists alike. The Biden administration’s rewrite involved more than two and a half years of consultation, modeling and analysis, Bureau of Reclamation spokesman Knecht said.
“There’s been an endless cycle of consultation after consultation, and it’s a huge drain,” said Scott Petersen, director of water policy at the San Luis & Delta-Mendota Water Authority, which supplies water from the Central Valley Federal Project to farmers. . . “It is important that this process is well done and not guided by political deadlines.”
It’s not simple. The rules for the projects have generated good political talking points, but they are so complicated that partisan differences come down to things like flow rates for a specific species or where to set a temperature gauge on a river. And it’s difficult to identify the impacts of the rules amid all the incremental back-and-forth.
“I think there are some water users in the system who think that if there is a change in management, there will be a total change in the way business is done here in California water, and I would disagree with that assessment,” Jennifer Pierre said. , the general manager of State Water Contractors, which obtains water from the state system in the Delta.
Environmentalists say the annual plans protect fish only slightly better than Trump’s rules and call them “Trump-light.” They also attacked Newsom for decisions to channel water out of the sensitive Delta region, which they say has caused populations of fish such as salmon and sturgeon to plummet.
“These fish are increasingly threatened,” said Jon Rosenfield, senior scientist at San Francisco Baykeeper. “They need real protections that biologists approve, not some poorly negotiated interim protections that a court approves every year.”
Ashley Overhouse, a lawyer with Defenders of Wildlife who is officially participating in the negotiation, called the Trump-era rules “not based on the best available science and the result of political interference.” But she is also concerned about the Biden administration’s rush to finalize new rules this year because it will have to review thousands of complex pages in two weeks.
“While we support this effort, it is a Herculean effort,” Overhouse said. “We will do our best.”
