Biden admin completes under-the-wire endangered species rules for California water projects

SACRAMENTO, California — The Biden administration signed off on Friday on its plan for how to run the massive system of pumps, canals, reservoirs that moves water across California, just weeks before President-elect Donald Trump takes office with a very different vision.

The Bureau of Reclamation’s record of decision closes a four-year process to overturn Trump’s previous rules for the Central Valley Project, which both environmentalists and the state of California claimed did not adequately protect endangered fish like the Chinook salmon and Delta smelt and sued over.

The Central Valley Project, operated jointly with the California-run State Water Project, delivers water from the wetter part of Northern California to Central Valley farmers and Southern California through the sensitive habitat of the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta.

Its guidelines are a perpetual political football and the Biden administration’s under-the-wire plan is likely to face at least some opposition from Trump, who vowed on the campaign trail to send more water to conservative-leaning Central Valley farmers.

The Trump transition team did not commit to any specific action following the decision on Friday.

“In his first term, President Trump advanced conservation and environmental stewardship while supporting America’s keystone agriculture sector across the country,” Trump-Vance transition spokesperson Karoline Leavitt said in an email. “In his second term, President Trump will once again deliver clean air and water for American families while looking out for our farmers because America can’t grow unless our farmers can sow.”

The heart of the plan details when federal managers should run the pumps that lift water out of the Delta into canals and pipes — and kill fish in the process. The Biden and Newsom administrations cast their jointly developed plan as more “balanced” than Trump’s previous version in press releases on Friday.

In particular, the Biden administration highlighted operational changes at the state’s largest reservoir, Shasta Reservoir, that could benefit winter-run Chinook salmon that depend on cold-water releases from the dam, as well as criteria for Delta exports that align with Newsom’s plan to boost habitat restoration in the region.

Both the Biden and Newsom administrations cheered the plan.

“The completion of new operating rules for the Central Valley Project is the cornerstone of our efforts to address record drought and changing climate conditions in California,” said Reclamation Commissioner Camille Calimlim Touton in a press release.

“Thanks to the support of the Biden-Harris Administration, California is taking action to make our water systems more resilient and lay the groundwork for new capacity in the future,” Newsom said in his own release.

But other parties — from all corners of the political spectrum — weren’t as happy with it.

Rep. Jim Costa and Rep.-elect Adam Gray, both moderate Democrats from the Central Valley, told Touton in a Tuesday letter they were concerned by the Biden administration’s timing, which included a shortened review period this summer.

“The issuance of such a significant decision so close to a change in administration, particularly without a complete analysis of Trinity River Division operations, may subject the [record of decision] and the biological opinions to close scrutiny that may reduce its durability,” they wrote. The “segmented nature” of the plan “may unintentionally undermine the more than $3 billion in Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and Inflation Reduction Act funding for California water projects,” they added.

The two biggest recipients of the federal water, the San Luis & Delta-Mendota Water Authority and the Westlands Water District, had urged the Biden administration to reject its preferred alternative in a letter this week.

“We are disappointed by the truncated and incomplete process that led to the issuance of the Record of Decision (ROD),” Allison Febbo, the general manager of Westlands Water District, said in an email. “This process did not allow adequate time for addressing critical issues brought forth by key stakeholders, including our district and other water users.”

Environmental groups have said the changes will do little to stop threatened fish from getting closer to extinction. A table of federal scientific modeling compiled by Jon Rosenfield at the San Francisco Baykeeper, for example, shows that most of the Biden administration’s policy changes are forecast to result in similar or worse outcomes for endangered fish than Trump’s version.

“This is not the Christmas present we asked for and certainly not the lifeline already struggling salmon fishing families needed while neck deep in a two-year salmon fishing shutdown,” said Scott Artis, the executive director of Golden State Salmon Association, in a press release. “Sure, the new NOAA Fisheries biological opinion includes a few modest improvements. But it’s not near enough.”

Newsom’s administration has already prepared itself an off-ramp in light of the federal back-and-forth over the endangered species rules: It adopted its own plan for the state-run pumps that allows it to maintain stricter endangered species protections under state law. That could lead to disjointed operations if Trump decided to again weaken the federal side of the rules. Both water districts and environmental groups have already sued over Newsom’s plan.

The federal plan is likely headed to the courts too.

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