Draft EIS for federal water project favors unsustainable status quo, ignores Tribal and community needs
A Draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS) from the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation on the continued operation of the federal Central Valley Project (CVP) favors corporate agricultural profits over the interests of ratepayers, tribes, and the environment and pointedly ignores state groundwater law.
The CVP is a massive federal system of reservoirs, aqueducts and pumping stations that delivers water from the Trinity River in Northwest California and Central Valley rivers to San Joaquin Valley agricultural operations and some California cities. The CVP is operated in coordination with its state analogue, the State Water Project (SWP). The CVP and SWP annually provide a small number of corporate farmers a volume of water equal to the total water usage of California’s 40 million residents.
Under the direction of President Biden, Reclamation conducted this draft analysis to reassess environmental determinations made during the Trump years.
The DEIS was released during the development of two diametrically opposed policy pathways, with some regulatory processes drafted by agencies to protect the environment and communities, while water districts drafted separate management proposals that assure further degradation of the Bay-Delta, the largest estuary on the West Coast.
The regulatory processes given short shrift in the DEIS include the update of the Bay-Delta Water Quality Control Plan and additional endangered species listings for native fish. The destructive projects include the proposed Delta Conveyance Project, the proposed Sites Reservoir, and the proposed “Voluntary Agreements.”
In this context, proposed voluntary agreements are accords between water agencies and contractors that attempt to avoid mandatory river flow requirements by releasing limited quantities of water into rivers and providing some habitat improvements. The State Water Board’s environmental analysis released in 2023 showed that such agreements would provide negligible benefit to fish and ecosystems, and they have faced extensive criticism, even from other federal agencies.
Max Gomberg, a water policy expert and board member of the California Water Impact Network, said that Reclamation’s DEIS retains most of the policies of the Trump administration – practices that will lead to the extinction of Central Valley salmon if left in place.
“The CVP DEIS contains several operations alternatives, but the Bureau’s preferred scenario essentially maintains the status quo,” Gomberg observed. “Reclamation’s proposed operations plan would allow environmentally destructive levels of water exports from the Sacramento River and Delta. Ratepayers, Central Valley tribes, Delta environmental justice communities, small farmers, and the Delta’s ecosystem and fisheries will all pay the cost. The only real beneficiaries are a few wealthy Central Valley growers who have senior water rights, which were in some cases obtained through violence and land dispossession from native peoples.”
Gomberg also noted that if Reclamation’s preferred alternative is adopted, disputes about the amount of water required for fish survival would routinely be resolved in favor of the largest growers.
“Having Reclamation and the Department of Water Resources as final decision makers is a ‘heads I win, tails you lose’ scenario for the environment,” he stated.
However, one alternative analyzed in the DEIS – Alternative 3 – gives the fisheries agencies the authority to make the final call, Gomberg added.
“According to multiple provisions of both state and federal law, that’s the way it should be,” he said.
Gomberg noted Alternative 3 also removes agricultural interests from the disputed resolution process, focusing the discussions on the federal and state agencies and tribes.
“It would be a significant improvement because it would ensure real-time operational decisions support the environment and tribes first,” he said.
But despite the incontrovertible evidence that Alternative 3 would produce better environmental outcomes than Reclamation’s preferred alternative, the DEIS attempts to undermine it in several ways, said Gomberg: in particular, the DEIS overstates groundwater pumping impacts by ignoring California’s groundwater law, the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA).
He also noted it undervalues the benefits of environmental restoration, overstates the costs of replacement water supplies, and does not include the benefits of healthier river systems to ratepayers, tribes, Delta environmental justice and agricultural communities, and California’s public.
“On the other hand, the DEIS assumes that instead of conservation, urban water districts will spend billions on alternative water supplies,” Gomberg said. “These biased conclusions are designed to make Alternative 3 or similar approaches that protect the environment seem infeasible. But a more thorough analysis would show restoring our rivers is a win for ratepayers too.”
