By Alastair Bland
Negotiations over how to manage the Delta’s water and fish species hit a boiling point in late January, when hundreds of members of the public, environmental groups, and Tribes pleaded for days on end with California water officials. They demanded that the State Water Resources Control Board go against the wishes of powerful farming districts and mandate that more water flows through the ailing estuary, lest its once prolific chinook salmon, sturgeon, and smelt cross thresholds of extinction.
“The soul of California is in your hands,” said East Bay resident Norma Wallace.
“We need salmon to survive,” one member of the Klamath River’s Yurok Tribe, with two children at her side, told the board.
Bay Area resident Rush Rehm implored the board to “stand up for science … for your legacy…. What are you going to leave behind, what will you pass on to future generations?”
Gary Mulcahey, government liaison for the Winnemem Wintu Tribe, which once subsisted on the McCloud River’s winter-run chinook, reminded the water board that their responsibility is not to guard agricultural water rights.
“You’re here to protect us all,” he said, adding, “You are our last line of defense.”
The grueling faceoff came during a three-day public hearing hosted by the State Water Board. The sessions focused on the Bay Delta Water Quality Control Plan, the keystone ruleset overseeing management of Delta water and its various beneficial uses. The plan is considered decades overdue for a thorough regulatory update.
Throughout the Jan. 28-30 meetings, the water board insisted they were fairly considering all interests:
“The honesty, the openness, all the frustration, it’s understood,” board chairman Joaquin Esquivel said.
As the hearings progressed, opinions on the updated draft plan divided participants along familiar lines of farms versus fish. Regina Chichizola, executive director of Save California Salmon, blamed the water board for repeatedly approving requests by farm groups to ease flow protections and increase water exports from the Delta. She said the Voluntary Agreements would worsen the plight of Central Valley’s chinook.
“We’ve lost 95% of [in-river spawning] spring-run salmon since 2018 because there were no flows in place,” she said.
But agricultural and municipal water supply agency representatives applauded the state’s preferred pathway for updating the Bay Delta Plan and rallied the board to implement it. Dubbed “Healthy Rivers and Landscapes” but best known as the Voluntary Agreements, the program is based on commitments from major water users to make small sacrifices of their water supply while rebuilding thousands of acres of structural habitat features, like floodplains, gravel beds, and side-channels.
If adopted by the State Water Board, the program could take effect before 2027. It would run for at least eight years and is intended to initiate a process of doubling the Central Valley’s chinook salmon population from levels seen between 1967 and 1991—a goal required by law for more than 30 years.
“I am passionate that this is the pathway to recover fish,” said California Natural Resources Secretary Wade Crowfoot in opening remarks on the first day of the hearing. “I also think it’s the most effective way to protect the beneficial uses [for] the majority of Californians that rely on water supply that comes through these river systems.”
But the small volumes of water allocated to the ecosystem by the Voluntary Agreements make the plan a dealbreaker for the environmental community. Devon Pearse, a biologist with the group Friends of the River, told the water board that the main factor limiting the recovery of salmonids in the Central Valley is not features like wetlands and spawning gravel beds but flow volume.
“Flow is the master variable,” said Pearse, who worked with the U.S. National Marine Fisheries Service for more than 20 years before cutting ties with the agency last April. “Flow is what influences the success or failure of all the other actions that may be taken under the VAs or any other plan. It is really what’s driving the health of the system.”
Hydrology breakdown
Each year on average, 28.5 million acre-feet of water flows off the slopes of the Sierra Nevada, the Cascades, and the Coast Range into the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers and their tributaries. Following diversions and exports from the river system and its delta, an average of about 15.5 million acre-feet of that water continues through the San Francisco Estuary and into the ocean. That’s enough water to fill a skyscraper about 3,000 miles tall.
Though a staggering volume, and one which varies greatly from year to year, this Delta outflow is insufficient for supporting the estuary’s native fish populations. That’s according to a wealth of scientific opinions, including those of state and federal scientists.
“The California ecosystem evolved for millennia with 100 percent of the unimpaired flow,” Friends of the River’s Pearse said. “So, that’s got to be the starting point, and then you consider how much humans can take.”
It’s the Delta’s highly impacted flows that make critics of the state’s Bay Delta Plan update nervous. Not only does the program offer very meager flow additions, but the Voluntary Agreements are poised to create a regulatory loophole that would render most of the Delta’s outflow—a key metric in the estuary’s water balance—unprotected from future water export and storage projects, including the heightening of Shasta Dam.
“The Delta tunnel and Sites Reservoir are the hardware to take a ton of additional water, and the VAs are the software,” said Barry Nelson, the senior policy advisor with the Golden State Salmon Association.
Louise Conrad, lead scientist with the Department of Water Resources—the agency pushing the Delta tunnel—called this warning “speculation.” She sees implementation of the Voluntary Agreements as creating “a space for considering our path forward for water management even as new projects are proposed.”
Backers of the state’s plan insist it will improve the Delta’s plight. It’s designed, they have said, to recognize base flows, or “reference conditions,” in the estuary, and to build upon them with additional water. Though wet and critically dry years would experience very slim flow additions under the Voluntary Agreements, Jennifer Pierre, the general manager of the State Water Contractors, said the program’s water provisions of 700,000 to 800,000 acre-feet in years designated dry, below normal and above normal “reflect an entire reservoirs’ worth of water” added to the ecosystem.
“It’s meant really to be additive to the times when the system actually needs the water,” said Pierre, one of the leading designers of the agreements.
But San Francisco Baykeeper’s Science Director Jon Rosenfield said the water provisions in the Voluntary Agreements simply aren’t enough. In his testimony at the hearing, he reviewed the board’s own analysis showing that the Voluntary Agreements, compared to the baseline, will produce no increase in the frequency of flows supporting salmon smolt outmigration, Delta smelt, and green and white sturgeon.
“This is not evidence that the flows of the VAs will achieve the plan’s objectives for viability or reasonably protect beneficial uses,” said Rosenfield, calling the Voluntary Agreements “an extinction plan” for native fish. “There’s no evidence in the record that the Voluntary Agreements will move the needle off that status quo, which is decline,” he said.
In an interview, Rosenfield emphasized that the danger of new water infrastructure further drawing down water levels should the state adopt the Voluntary Agreements is not theoretical.
“The Delta Conveyance Project application is before the board right now,” he said. “Sites Reservoir is applying for a permit right now.”
Only about five million acre-feet of Delta outflow is firmly protected by bedrock, longstanding water quality and environmental regulations, including the Endangered Species Act, according to a September 2023 analysis by the water board staff. Gold Gate Salmon’s Nelson explained that while the Voluntary Agreements will initially add modestly to this protected Delta outflow, they will leave the remainder of the current average annual outflow—about 10 million acre-feet—unprotected from future water infrastructure projects.
The State Water Board itself has acknowledged for years the risk of future infrastructure gulping the Delta’s unprotected flows.
“Existing regulatory minimum Delta outflows are too low to protect the ecosystem, and without additional regulatory protections, existing flows will likely be reduced in the future as new storage and diversion facilities are constructed,” the board staff wrote in 2018. Similar language has appeared in more recent documents.
“This is not an accident, it’s by design,” Nelson warned.
The Unpreferred Alternative
Hoping to protect the estuary’s unsecured water from future projects, environmental groups have urged the board to implement a set of rules requiring that between 45% and 65% of the watershed’s total, or unimpaired flow, reaches the ocean, at an average of 55%. Such a framework would help maximize the ecological, flood-related benefits of wet years for sturgeon, salmon, and smelt while shielding species from the devastating impacts of dry years, when flows through the Delta tend to dwindle.
Perhaps more importantly, it would create a watertight seal protecting the estuary’s water from future projects. To the dismay of its proponents, this numeric regulatory approach has been relegated to a backstop tool in case the Voluntary Agreements—the state’s preferred alternative—fail to revive the ecosystem.
The State Water Board has described the importance of flows well above 50% and 60% of unimpaired. In 2017, when the board was under different leadership, its staff scientists predicted “limited benefits” from unimpaired outflow between 35% and 45% compared to current conditions at the time while suggesting flows as high as 75% of unimpaired to recharge the ecosystem.
“55% was actually a compromise,” Regina Chichizola, of Save California Salmon, pointed out in a presentation before the board.
In response to concerns from the environmental community, the Water Board in 2023 released draft rules that would have more firmly protected flows into the future. The Department of Water Resources pushed back, with director Karla Nemeth saying in a letter to the board that this alternative would “reduce the yield of the [Delta tunnel] over all water year types by an average of 55%.”
The latest draft of the state’s plan lacks airtight language on the matter, promising only that officials would “consider needed measures to protect the base flows and additive flows” each time they processed new water right applications or other petitions to expand water use.
Any water deficit created by the state’s plan will likely be worsened by recent federal initiatives, like the so-called Action 5, which increases water exports from the Delta and undercuts the flow baseline on which the Voluntary Agreements’ flow additions are predicated. Ashley Overhouse, Defenders of Wildlife’s California water policy advisor, said state water officials have attempted “to justify less Delta outflow at a time when we are frankly facing a volatile and uncertain water future.”
Water board member Laurel Firestone flagged this danger, saying she is “most concerned about addressing the changing baseline that could significantly harm the ability of the [Voluntary Agreement] flows to have any real effect.”
Rosenfield warned that the Voluntary Agreements, in the median year, could eventually allow Delta outflow to drop as low as 20% of unimpaired in the future, with half of years seeing even lower outflow rates—flow regimes all but certain that experts say wouldto drive native fishes extinct.
Cold water is also vital for the Delta’s fish, but the Voluntary Agreements impose only loose protections for cold water reserves, requiring that water users “develop long-term temperature management strategies” which would undergo review by the water board, according to the latest draft. The requirements lack numeric targets.
But the 55% unimpaired flow rules could have their own impacts on temperatures, said Michelle Workman, manager of the Natural Resources Department at the East Bay Municipal Utility District. She explained that by requiring a steady downstream flow of water, the rules could force her district to prematurely drain its Sierra Nevada reservoir system and its cold water pool.
“We could give the Delta the water that would be required by the unimpaired flow rules, but it would, in my opinion as a fish biologist, decimate our fisheries program and our fish populations,” Workman said.
Rosenfield said implementing an adaptive range of as low as 45% unimpaired flow, or as high as 65% in wetter years, could mitigate such temperature impacts in most cases.
A Price Tag of Billions
Non-flow habitat restoration remains the focus of the agreements. Of 47,000 acres of floodplains, in-stream rearing grounds, and spawning habitat proposed for restoration under the agreements, nearly one third of this work has already been carried out or partially completed, in some cases under existing rules and requirements—what critics consider double counting of past projects as future gains.
Much of the remaining acreage will cost a great deal to restore, with a price tag of more than $2 billion. This has critics asking how Voluntary Agreements participants will pay for it. State documents suggest the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, which operates Lake Shasta and its own Delta pumping station, will pitch in $740 million to the projects. But when asked if this commitment was firm, bureau spokesperson Mary Lee Garrison Knecht said “[t]he $740 million represents the broad federal partnership in the Central Valley, including working through the Floodplain Forward [Memorandum of Understanding].”
The lack of clear federal funding commitment for the Voluntary Agreements, critics argue, means much of the planned habitat work could go undone. They’ve also questioned whether building more structural habitat features will do fish any good without significantly increased water provisions.
“To say that we’re going to rely on habitat and then not require that that habitat actually be wet … what is fish habitat if it’s not wet?” Chichizola said.
Whether the revised Bay-Delta plan and voluntary agreements achieve the necessary integration between physical habitat improvements and restored flows remains hotly debated.
Since the last full update to the plan in 1995, California’s salmon runs have nosedived. The most rapid decline began around 2007. Other species crashed in tandem. Experts concluded the collapse was the result of a suite of impacts on the entire Delta ecosystem, many—like elevated water temperatures—stemming from a shortage of water.
Though supporters of the Voluntary Agreements tout its broad environmental assets, the plan, by allowing another 25 years to reach the mandated salmon doubling target, essentially punts this responsibility to the next generation.
UC Santa Cruz biologist and affiliate with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Cyril Michel said doubling could probably be achieved more rapidly. Wet conditions, he said, are key, and while mother nature will steer the fate of the Central Valley’s salmon, water managers can influence outcomes.
“If you’re able to recreate those conditions with managed flow actions and habitat restoration, it’s possible to really bring salmon back quickly, possibly in less than a decade,” Michel said.
A five-year wet spell in the late 1990s, for example, led to a bomb-blast salmon return in 2002, showing how periods of high flow in the Central Valley watershed usually induce fish population growth.
Michel’s research has shown that strategically timed pulse flows released from reservoirs to assist with downstream migration can help increase smolt survival and mitigate the deadly effects of dry years, when weak downstream flows often leave young salmon stranded or otherwise vulnerable to predators.
But because the Voluntary Agreements provide such skimpy water provisions in critically dry years, a multi-year drought on par with those of the recent past could render potential fishery benefits of the program ineffective, with much or most habitat features restored through the program left high and dry.
Rick Duenas, a hunter, birder, and angler who lives on the San Mateo Coast, told the water board he appreciates the habitat offerings of the Voluntary Agreements but is concerned that they will prove ineffective during droughts, an inevitable outcome of California’s mediterranean hydrology.
“We’ve been pretty lucky the past few years with some banner wet years,” he said. “But what happens when that luck runs out?”
Who’s Bearing the Burden?
As Californians and their leaders contend with vanishing fish populations, a limited supply of water, and an agriculture industry as thirsty as it is powerful, negotiations over Delta water circulate around the notion of meeting the state’s purported coequal goals of delivering water both for people and the environment.
During his opening comments at the January hearings, Resources Secretary Crowfoot spoke to the challenges in striking this balance.
“It was only three years ago when we really hit the depths of some of our salmon populations scraping towards extinction, and at the same time we had five million Californians under water rationing,” he said.
The narrative is compelling but sets a false equivalence between competing uses of water. Whereas urban and suburban residents contend with little more serious than brown lawns during water shortages, native fish populations are facing imminent extinction.
California’s agriculture sector, too, has enjoyed unyielding revenue growth since inception, even through severe droughts.
Gary Bobker, program director with Friends of the River, remarked on the slanted playing field on which the water board is now ostensibly pursuing balance.
“We’re not here in this room because California agriculture is drying up and blowing away,” Bobker said. “We’re not in this room because people are dying of thirst in cities. We’re here because one of the world’s great ecosystems is in danger, where species are going extinct as we speak…. But the path that the board is taking is putting all of the risk on the ecosystem and none of the risk on the consumptive uses that are driving the decline of that ecosystem.”
This article was produced by Estuary News Group, and is the second of two framing the debate over the Voluntary Agreements. Find the first story here.
