Draft Plan Promotes Illegal “Voluntary Agreements” and Violates State Water Code
The draft State Water Resources Control Board Water Quality Control Plan for the San Francisco Bay / Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta Watershed (WQCP) is “both illegal and morally indefensible,” said water policy experts from the California Water Impact Network (C-WIN) in a press statement.
“The draft plan would illegally delegate responsibility for maintaining healthy rivers and vibrant communities to water contractors serving corporate agriculture,” said Max Gomberg, a C-WIN board member and the former Climate and Conservation Manager for the State Water Resources Control Board. “It is morally indefensible for the Water Board to rubber stamp backroom deals that deliberately exclude tribes, environmental justice communities, and scientific experts.”
Gomberg also noted that the WQCP specifically violates Water Code Section 13241, which requires economic considerations for protecting the “beneficial uses” of water resources.
“Keeping water affordable and available to our environment requires reducing diversions to corporate agriculture,” Gomberg said. “Any honest plan would transparently address the ways to responsibly reduce production of luxury export products like almonds. This plan shows a callous indifference to the damage caused by massive agricultural water subsidies.”
Tom Stokely, a C-WIN water policy and fisheries analyst, said the Delta Plan puts the Trinity River – a major tributary of the Klamath River that is essential for sustaining the Klamath’s salmon runs – at profound risk.
“This plan is essentially a raid on the Trinity River, given it will siphon off increasing volumes of Trinity River water for corporate agricultural operations in the Central Valley,” said Stokely. “The Trinity is the cold water tap for the Klamath. Without ample Trinity River water, we will see terrible salmon mortality in the Lower Klamath – as we did in 2002, when 65,000 adult salmon died due to low Trinity flows.”
“Hundreds of millions of dollars were recently spent to remove four dams on the Upper Klamath and restore salmon runs. But as it stands, the WQCP completely undermines those efforts. Sacrificing Trinity and Klamath salmon for export almonds isn’t a good trade,” argued Stokely.
Gomberg also cited other deficiencies in the WQCP, including:
• Overreliance on Narrative Rather than Numeric Objectives for Environmental Protections
“Vague narratively described objectives are no substitute for specifically quantifying fish and wildlife beneficial uses, especially since the WQCP does use numeric objectives to characterize municipal, industrial and agricultural beneficial uses,” said Gomberg.
• Unreasonable Delays
Gomberg observed the WQCP’s proposed methodologies are too complex and time-consuming, meaning Delta flow improvements could be delayed for years, degrading fisheries and the environment.
“The WQCP has no provision for immediate and interim requirements,” Gomberg said. “This is particularly galling, given the fact that the plan’s draft Substitute Environmental Document (SED) was released over a year ago.”
• The Board Is Refusing to Exert Its Legal Authority
“In both the SED and the WQCP, the Board insists its role in areas such as habitat improvement is passive,” said Gomberg. “In reality, the Board has the authority – and the responsibility – to enforce statutory compliance in defense of the public trust. It is simply scamping its duty.”
• The WQCP Perpetuates Harm to Tribal Communities
“While the WQCP discusses the potential for tribal beneficial use, it does not identify a timeline for setting numeric protective standards or establishing pathways for incorporating those protections into regulatory controls,” Gomberg said.
C-WIN executive director Carolee Krieger said the SWRCB must revise the WQCP if it hopes to fulfill its legal and ethical responsibilities as a public trustee.
“This Water Board is required to preserve, protect and direct the equitable distribution of water for all Californians,” said Krieger. “As it stands, this plan is an outright gift to powerful agribusiness interests at the expense of ratepayers, taxpayers, farming and fishing families, and communities throughout the state. It is unacceptable.”
Background: Central Valley salmon and Delta fish populations are in worst-ever crisis
The release of the draft State Water Resources Control Board Water Quality Control Plan for the San Francisco Bay / Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta Watershed (WQCP) comes as ocean and river salmon fishing seasons in California have been closed for the past two years, due to the collapse of Sacramento River and Klamath River fall-run Chinook salmon populations.
The Sacramento River fall-run Chinook salmon population has been the driver of West Coast ocean salmon fisheries for decades. However, record low returns of salmon to Coleman National Fish Hatchery, largely due to failed state and federal water policies, have resulted in the fishery disaster.
Meanwhile, endangered winter and spring-Chinook salmon populations are moving closer and closer to extinction. Spawner escapement of endangered Sacramento River Winter Chinook (SRWC) in 2023 was estimated to be only 2,447 adults and 54 jacks, according to Pacific Fishery Management Council data.
Butte Creek, once the stronghold of spring-run Chinook, saw a record low 100 fish return to spawn last year and an even lower number of fish this year. Only 51 spring Chinooks were reported in the Butte Creek snorkel count and “probably less than 25” in the carcass count in 2024, according to Allen Harthorn, executive director of Friends of Butte Creek.
The total number of salmon returning to the Sacramento and Klamath rivers and their tributaries this year won’t be made public until the data is posted on the Pacific Fishery Management Council’s website in late February 2025 and released in a yet-to-be announced CDFW salmon fishery information meeting in preparation for the crafting of salmon seasons in March and April.
The Delta Smelt, an indicator species that was once the most abundant fish in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, is virtually extinct in the wild, due to massive water exports to agribusiness and other factors, including invasive species, toxics and pollution, over the past several decades. Zero smelt have been caught over the past six years in the California Department of Fish and Wildlife’s Midwater Trawl Survey.
Then in the summer of 2024 a weekly survey by the US Fish and Wildlife Service targeting Delta smelt caught only one smelt, despite the stocking of thousands of hatchery-raised smelt by the state and federal governments over the past few years. “A late April IEP juvenile fish survey (the 20-mm Survey) caught several juvenile Delta smelt in the same area,” noted fishery scientist Tom Cannon in his blog on the California Sportfishing Protection Alliance website: calsport.org/..
Meanwhile, the other pelagic species collected in the survey — striped bass, longfin smelt, Sacramento splittail and threadfin shad — continued their dramatic decline since 1967 when the State Water Project went into effect. Only the American shad shows a less precipitous decline.
Between 1967 and 2020, the state’s Fall Midwater Trawl abundance indices for striped bass, Delta smelt, longfin smelt, American shad, splittail and threadfin shad have declined by 99.7, 100, 99.96, 67.9, 100, and 95%, respectively, according to the California Sportfishing Protection Alliance.
The graphs in this CDFW memo graphically illustrate how dramatic the declines in fish populations have been over the years: nrm.dfg.ca.gov/…
Unfortunately, the CDFW hasn’t posted the results of this year’s fall survey yet, but I will post the results as soon as they become available.
There is no doubt that the State Water Project (SWP) and Central Valley Project (CVP) Delta “death pumps” have been the biggest killers of salmon, steelhead, Sacramento splittail and other fish species in California for many decades, as I have documented in hundreds of articles in an array of publications.