{"id":467045,"date":"2026-09-17T18:40:13","date_gmt":"2026-09-17T18:40:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/467045\/"},"modified":"2026-09-17T18:40:13","modified_gmt":"2026-09-17T18:40:13","slug":"newsoms-bay-delta-plan-thrown-into-confusion-after-rebuke-from-trump-administration","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/467045\/","title":{"rendered":"Newsom\u2019s Bay-Delta Plan Thrown Into Confusion After Rebuke From Trump Administration"},"content":{"rendered":"

Written comments are due by the close of this week for a major rewrite of plan to keep the Bay-Delta ecosystem healthy.\n<\/p>\n

Sep 17, 2026<\/p>\n

Updated 10:59 am PT<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

The potential site of the water tunnel center intake on the Sacramento River in Courtland, California, on March 1, 2020. Fishermen, water-sports advocates, farmers and environmentalists are lining up on differing sides of the issue regarding plans to build a tunnel system to move San Joaquin River Delta water to Southern California. \u00a0(Santiago Mejia\/The San Francisco Chronicle via Getty Images)<\/p>\n

California<\/a>\u2019s current plan for making sure the water flowing through the San Francisco Bay-Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta is clean and abundant enough to protect threatened and endangered wildlife<\/a> is old and not working<\/a>. This nexus of waterways, so crucial to the functioning of the state, has been long fought over and will be fought over long into the future.<\/p>\n

At the moment, however, the fight However, looks particularly chaotic.<\/p>\n

Gov. Gavin Newsom first proposed major changes to rules governing the Bay-Delta in 2020<\/a>, arguing his proposal strikes a balance for use of the water for cities, growers and fish. The framework for managing the Sacramento River was last meaningfully updated in 1995, despite the fact that it is supposed to be reviewed and updated if needed every three years. The regulations were refined over years and backed by $1.5 billion in state funds<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The state water board announced the release of its final draft update to the document known as the Bay-Delta Water Quality Control Plan in late August. It is now in the public comment period. Written comments are due Sept. 18. Oral comments will be accepted during an upcoming public meeting in Sacramento on Oct. 28 and 29. After that, the board is supposed to consider input, alter as needed and adopt the plan by the end of the month.<\/p>\n

\"\"The Sacramento River in December 2019, in Clarksburg. The area is near a potential site for a new single tunnel beneath the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta that will help move Northern California water south to cities and farms, state water officials say.\u00a0(Santiago Mejia\/The San Francisco Chronicle via Getty Images)<\/p>\n

Gov. Newsom pressed for an approach that stressed collaboration between water agencies and funding for fish-habitat restoration, instead of imposing strict limits on how much water can be pulled from the delta system for cities and farms. The goal was to use more water more flexibly, but to do it in a way that did not unduly harm threatened and endangered species.<\/p>\n

Newsom\u2019s approach, however, does not appear to have the federal buy-in it needs.<\/p>\n

The Bureau of Reclamation said it had \u201cserious concern[s]\u201d with the plan as written, in a comment posted on its website<\/a>. Both it and the Westlands Water District, the Central Valley\u2019s largest irrigation district, have threatened to walk away without major revisions.<\/p>\n

\"\"California Secretary for Natural Resources Wade Crowfoot speaks during a San Onofre lease agreement celebration at Trail 6 in San Onofre State Park on April 21, 2025. \u00a0(Leonard Ortiz\/MediaNews Group\/Orange County Register via Getty Images)<\/p>\n

\u201cI understand there are folks that don\u2019t feel [this] is an appropriate pathway,\u201d\u00a0 Crowfoot said, addressing the plan\u2019s critics. \u201cI can tell you, though, we are confident in the ability to implement [this program] and achieve improved environmental outcomes.\u201d<\/p>\n

Back in 2022, the Bureau of Reclamation, under the leadership of the Biden administration,\u00a0 signed an agreement with the state that expressed an intent to collaborate on the voluntary agreements. But it was not binding.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The state water board, in its August update, said, in effect, if baseline environmental protections were undermined, water users would have to come up with a plan to replace the lost water to keep the ecosystem intact. This is to prevent the backsliding of standards. It was enough, however, for the federal government and water contractors to remove support.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have been saying for years that the Trump administration was a bad partner and would not implement the voluntary agreements,\u201d said Barry Nelson, senior policy adviser and founding board member for the Golden State Salmon Association. \u201cAs bad as [the agreements] are, they\u2019re not bad enough for the Trump administration.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nelson points to a pattern of the administration undermining environmental protections, as has been extensively<\/a> documented by news organizations.<\/p>\n

\"\"The Rio Vista Bridge spanning the Sacramento River in California on Sept. 10, 2021. The area is part of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, which is the hub of California\u2019s water supply, supplying fresh water to two-thirds of the state\u2019s population and millions of acres of farmland.\u00a0(Joyce Tsai\/KQED)<\/p>\n

Nelson said he sees four possible paths for the next few months. One, the water board could just adopt its current plan, ignoring the bureau\u2019s comments and setting up a legal fight. Two, they could try to quickly rewrite the plan and put it out again in a month. Three, they sit down with federal agencies and try to negotiate a new agreement before January.<\/p>\n

The last option \u201cwould be extraordinarily hard to do, and there\u2019s simply no time to get it done legally,\u201d said Nelson, referring to the required environmental analysis and public comment period.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Crowfoot said he believes the water board would be careful to ensure anything it adopts has undergone full environmental review. \u201cThe board will no doubt have to consider that as a need as it considers input from all these different stakeholders,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Option four, as Nelson sees it, is that the problem gets handed to the next state administration, headed by either Xavier Becerra, the Democrat candidate for California\u2019s governor, or Steve Hilton, his Republican opponent. While Hilton has signaled he favors decreased regulations and environmental protections, frontrunner Becerra has not yet spoken extensively about California Bay-Delta issues. That could soon change.<\/p>\n

Jennifer Pierre, general manager of the State Water Contractors, an association of 27 of the public water agencies in California, said in a statement to KQED she believes the Healthy Rivers and Landscapes program \u201ccan be the best path for California water if we can address the remaining key issues.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cCalifornia deserves a water management system that works, and the proposed combination of environmental flows, significant habitat, funding, and science, if adopted, is our best chance to get things right,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Written comments are due by the close of this week for a major rewrite of plan to keep…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":467046,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[121,123,122],"class_list":["post-467045","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sacramento","tag-sacramento","tag-sacramento-headlines","tag-sacramento-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/467045","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=467045"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/467045\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/467046"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=467045"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=467045"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=467045"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}