Trump administration threatens to withdraw hundreds of millions in federal funding
The State Water Resources Control Board approved the update late Thursday night, after two days of public comment and several hours of deliberation over last-minute changes. The plan overhauls how farms and cities take water from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta and the rivers that feed it.
It gives water agencies a choice: agree to forgo some water and restore habitats, or fall under the regulatory backup — a set of mandatory rules for how much water must remain in rivers and streams to flow through the Delta. The voluntary framework, officially the Healthy Rivers and Landscapes Program, is backed by $2.9 billion of mostly state money, along with federal and water supplier funds. The Newsom administration touted the agreements as a way to forestall legal fights while balancing competing demands on the Delta.
But the compromise the Newsom administration reached four years ago with the state’s most powerful water suppliers now faces opposition from unexpected quarters. Agencies that once backed it say the agreements have become too restrictive. The Trump administration has threatened to withdraw support and several hundred million dollars in funding. Environmental advocates, tribes and fishing groups warn that the deal and its regulatory backup gut protections for an ecosystem they describe as already in crisis.
Opening the final hearings this week, board Chair E. Joaquin Esquivel said he was struck by the opposing criticism and called water agencies’ narrative that the plan has strayed from Newsom’s original deal “convenient theater.”
“Some agencies say we kept too much oversight,” Esquivel said. Tribes and environmental groups, he said, counter that “we kept too little. They are pointing at the same provisions from opposite directions. That doesn’t make the plan perfect. It does tell me the plan sits where a regulator should.”
The Delta is the heart of California’s water delivery system, where state and federal pumps export Northern California river water to Central and Southern California. It is also the center of California’s water wars. State officials have warned for years that existing rules are not enough to stop the precipitous decline of native species such as salmon as they lose freshwater to cities and farms. Crashing populations forced the recent cancellation of salmon fishing for three years in a row. The state last overhauled the Bay-Delta Water Quality Control Plan, the keystone document governing water quality and flows, in 1995.
Only one board member, civil engineer Nichole Morgan, voted against the update. Among the yes votes was Jared Blumenfeld, Newsom’s former secretary for environmental protection and a signatory to the original deal. California Natural Resources Secretary Wade Crowfoot told a quiet room Thursday that he knew the path forward was uncomfortable for everyone.
“We heard yesterday a lot of groups, including tribal governments, that continue to believe that this is not sufficient, and this is the wrong approach,” Crowfoot said. “We have water agencies that aren’t comfortable with the way that their proposal — our proposal — has materialized … That’s natural. This is a paradigm shift.”
The original signatories are balking after years of regulatory processes, public comment and environmental review. Water users including Westlands Water District, a power player in the state’s $60 billion agricultural economy, say the current plan is not what they signed up for. “It’s unrecognizable,” said Jennifer Pierre, general manager of the State Water Contractors, which represents public water agencies serving 750,000 acres of farmland and 27 million people.
Pierre called the latest version a “complete system of micromanagement” that centers too much decision-making with the board’s executive director and retains too little flexibility. “I think everyone’s reviewing it to see, okay, we’ve all acknowledged this is not what we proposed, but is it workable?” she said.
The federal threat carries particular weight because the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, which operates California’s federal water delivery system, pumps Delta water to millions of acres of Central Valley farmland. State water regulators note that no one has yet officially withdrawn from the deal.
Aubrey J.D. Bettencourt, the bureau’s principal deputy commissioner, wrote to the board in September to express the Trump administration’s “serious concern” with the near-final draft, which she said “reflects more of what has come to be expected from the State Board – executive and regulatory overreach, questionable legal authority, and continued downward pressure on water users throughout the state,” referring to reduced water supplies.
Bettencourt wrote that if the board fails to address those concerns, federal water managers will pull out and stop funding a plan she said “threatens reliability of water supplies that support … the entire fabric of California’s agricultural economy, rural communities, urban centers, and natural vitality.” Federal money was originally anticipated to reach $740 million — part of the voluntary agreements’ $2.9 billion price tag intended to pay for habitat restoration and water purchases. Barry Nelson, a senior policy analyst with the Golden State Salmon Association, said at a briefing for reporters that the federal threat hits harder than objections from other water users: “They’re the largest water project in the Central Valley. They have more storage than anyone else in the state of California. And they jointly operate the Delta with the state.”
The dispute centers in part on a new provision requiring state or federal managers to submit a plan to make up the loss if substantial changes to water deliveries decrease flows through the Delta. The addition followed the Trump administration’s unilateral move last December to allow more federal exports from the Delta to Central Valley farms — a step California officials, who typically coordinate with federal water managers, warned at the time risked leaving less water for other users and the environment.
State regulators say the plan can still succeed without federal participation or money. “We’re still committed to making the (voluntary agreements) pathway work for the other participants. It does complicate things, and we’ll have to work through that,” said Eric Oppenheimer, the board’s executive director. If the administration pulls out, he said, the bureau would instead be bound by the backup rules — and, he added, the board’s modeling shows it is in the Trump administration’s best interest to stick with the voluntary agreements, because doing so would allow federal contractors to export more water. “It has a reduced water supply impact for Reclamation and its contractors, and we also think that the voluntary agreement itself is a benefit for the ecosystem,” Oppenheimer said. “But we can’t make them volunteer.”
Environmental advocates and the fishing industry remain skeptical that state regulators will truly hold the federal government to the backup rules. They point to increased federal releases from Lake Shasta to send water to Central Valley farms this past summer, despite state objections that the move would sap cold water necessary for imperiled salmon.
Gary Bobker, program director at Friends of the River, which fought the voluntary agreements from the outset for failing to protect the Delta and all who depend on it, said at a briefing Tuesday that the unresolved standoff “creates a world of confusion and dysfunction.” Those longtime opponents say it is ironic that water users are now fighting the deal, too. “And I think the board recognizes that they’re going to be handed an incredible morass,” he said.
“There actually might be a war among water users,” Bobker said. “That’s kind of what you’re seeing here: people who think the (voluntary agreements) are a weak-enough gutting of the regulations, and those who think actually no, they don’t go far enough.”