Republican legislators push back on Bay-Delta Water Plan

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(The Center Square) – Republican politicians are pushing back on a draft of California’s Bay-Delta Water Quality Control Plan, citing taxpayer concerns and an abstract regulatory framework.

The plan concerns the state’s San Francisco Bay/Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta Watershed, which covers more than 75,000 square miles and serves as the primary source of drinking water for 25 million people in California, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The Bay-Delta Watershed also irrigates 7,000 square miles of agriculture.

According to a Sept. 17 letter sent from Assembly Minority Leader Alexandra Macedo, R-Tulare, to E. Joaquin Esquivel, chair of the California Water Resources Control Board, the plan would establish an expansive regulatory approach to regulating tributaries to the Sacramento River and Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta. The plan establishes a framework based on 55% of unimpaired flow on the tributaries, subject to adjustments and future implementation decisions, Macedo wrote in the letter.

“Such a sweeping regulatory approach could have significant consequences for reservoir storage, water deliveries, groundwater conditions, agricultural production, rural communities, and the broader California economy,” Macedo wrote. “Yet critical elements of how that regulatory program would actually operate remain unresolved. The Board should fully define the regulatory program and evaluate its real-world water supply and economic consequences before asking Californians to bear those costs.”

Among the unresolved issues Macedo and other lawmakers raised concerns about, questions remained about who would be required to provide water under the board’s rules, when that water would be required to be released into the Bay-Delta system and what those requirements mean for communities and industries that rely on the Bay-Delta.

Macedo and other lawmakers The Center Square reached out to for this story were not available before publication time on Monday.

“The State Water Board is asking the Valley to accept the consequences before it has finished defining the rules,” Macedo said in a Sept. 17 press release . “Before Sacramento moves forward, Valley families, farmers and communities deserve to know what this will actually mean for their water.”

In a comment sent to The Center Square via email, the State Water Resources Control Board said the final draft of the Bay-Delta Plan is the result of years of collaboration with water users, federal and state agencies, tribes and communities.

“It was deliberately built to offer two enforceable paths to the same goal: participants may implement the negotiated package of flows and habitat restoration or meet the plan’s flow-based regulatory requirements,” Ailene Voisin, information officer for the board, told The Center Square via email. “That structure does not depend on any single participant and is constructed to ensure the watershed’s fish, wildlife, communities and Tribes are protected under either path. We remain committed to collaboration with Healthy Rivers and Landscapes program partners.”

One of the main concerns in the letter from Republican lawmakers to the Water Resources Control Board was over the Healthy Rivers and Landscapes program, which aims to restore rivers, floodplains and natural landscapes. All of that would be in an effort to create better habitat for salmon populations returning to rivers, expanding bird and wildlife populations, and increasing productivity of ricelands, orchards and field crops, according to the program’s website.

“The Healthy Rivers and Landscapes program is a critical step forward to protect future water supplies while improving environmental conditions across our largest river systems,” said Ryan Endean, deputy director of communications for the California Department of Water Resources. “DWR will continue working with our partners to advance the commitments of Healthy Rivers and Landscapes.”

The Water Resources Control Board will next take up consideration of the Bay-Delta plan Oct. 28-29, according to the board's schedule.