Groups Say 'Hell No' to Newsom and DWR's Plan to Fast-Track Delta Tunnel

SACRAMENTO — Meet the “new” plan, same as the old plan.

The California Department of Water Resources  released a controversial report today, the “State Water Project Adaptation Strategy,” claiming that a combination of strategies, led by the Delta Conveyance Project, can help the State Water Project maintain “reliable water deliveries” to California cities and agribusiness “despite hotter temperatures, more extreme storms, more severe droughts, and higher sea levels.”

“The science is clear: California must quickly complete the Delta Conveyance Project in order to meet our water needs in the future. It’s time to stop with the delays and fear tactics,” said Governor Gavin Newsom in a statement. “We need Legislative approval to fast-track the benefits this project will secure.” 

But environmental and fishing groups and Tribes cried foul, noting that the Delta Tunnel would devastate the San Francisco Bay-Delta ecosystem, Tribes, Delta farmers, fishing communities and Delta farmers — while costing up to $100 billion to build and maintain and increasing water costs to Southern California ratepayers. 

The Golden State Salmon Association noted that the “State Water Project Adaptation Strategy” is “intended to lay the groundwork for the anticipated release of budget trailer bills to rewrite state law to push Governor Newsom’s massive 36-foot-diameter Delta tunnel and to eliminate the State Water Board’s obligation to prepare a CEQA Environmental Impact Report analyzing the salmon-killing Voluntary Agreements (VAs).”

“Several facts jump out to California’s salmon fishing community,” said Scott Artis, Executive Director of the Golden State Salmon Association. “The Newsom Administration proposes to increase total State Water Project Delta diversions by 329,000-425,000 acre-feet per year. This massive increase in water pumping would be made possible if the Water Board adopts the Voluntary Agreements (VAs).”

“The VAs are designed to set the stage for the Delta tunnel by stripping the Bay-Delta Plan of standards to protect the river flows that salmon depend on,” Artis explained. “The VAs are a scam that would cost state and federal taxpayers $2 billion to support a plan to make the Bay-Delta ecosystem and salmon runs sicker than they are today. Most of that money would go to the water interests that wrote the VAs.”

“The VAs would also set the stage for massive increases in diversions by other water projects. In typical style, the Newsom Administration failed to ask for any input on this document from the salmon fishing community or other stakeholders fighting to save a collapsing Bay-Delta and salmon runs,” Artis continued.

“This plan – and the Governor’s trailer bills – would be a death blow to the wild spawning salmon runs that support California’s commercial and recreational salmon fishing industry. That’s why we say ‘hell no’ to the Newsom water scam,” Artis concluded.

Carolee Krieger, Executive Director of the California Water Impact Network, also slammed DWR’s plan, which is pushed by big water brokers like the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California and billionaire agribusiness oligarchs like Stewart and Lynda Resnick, the owners of the Wonderful Company and the largest orchard fruit growers in the world.

“The Metropolitan Water District of Southern California needs to put the interests of their ratepayers and the taxpayers of Southern California they serve before the greed of corporate agriculture interests like the Resnicks, who use 13% of all agricultural water consumed. Remember, agriculture uses 80% of the water consumed in California,” said Krieger. 

“Metropolitan wants to approve the tunnel, but they don’t seem to care that economic experts at ECO Northwest have told them it will cost $60 to $100 billion, not $20 billion as DWR has said.  DWR left off normal cost overruns and interest,” she said. “And there is NO NEW WATER to put in this boondoggle tunnel.”

“Why is Metropolitan more interested in helping the Resnicks and not their own ratepayers?” Krieger asked.

Morgen Snyder, Policy Manager with Restore the Delta, noted, “Framed as an evaluation, this report is DWR’s self-validating push for the Delta Conveyance Project, touting debunked half-truths while ignoring the most obvious investment needed: upgrades to existing Delta levees that protect SWP infrastructure, Delta residents, and the nearly $7 billion Delta economy.”

Among the report’s most concerning flaws Synder noted are:

• “Overstated earthquake risk in the Delta, which independent experts have long warned is exaggerated to justify the tunnel.
• Cherry-picked climate science, with DWR continuing a “high concern” framing on sea level rise while downplaying alternative adaptation options.
• Failure to address Delta levee upgrades, despite clear evidence that continued land subsidence threatens both aqueducts and levees.
• Mischaracterization of flood and storage risks, framing natural river flows as “wasted” water rather than vital ecological functions.
• Repackaged stakeholder engagement promises, which echo past performative processes without meaningful input from Delta communities.
• Costly distractions from real needs, with DWR leaning on Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA) goals to justify the tunnel instead of addressing unsustainable water use and groundwater recharge infrastructure.”

The group said the Delta supports a nearly $7 billion local economy, including $5 billion in agriculture, $1.5 billion in commercial salmon fishing, and $780 million in recreation – an economy left out of DWR’s calculations.

As a press conference at the State Capitol on Friday, in advance of beginning of the Legislature’s session after summer break, Gary Mulcahy, Governor Liaison with the Winnemem Wintu Tribe, quipped, “Apparently we need a No Kings act passed in California in order to put the Governor in his place.”

“Time after time, organization after organization, tribe after tribe, farmer after farmer, disadvantaged community after disadvantaged community, elected official after elected official, and on and on, have said that the Delta Conveyance Project and the trailer bills that would change California law to help build it, are not wanted, not needed, and devastatingly destructive. Yet, King Newsom continues to push ahead with his personal agenda,” Mulcahy said.

The DWR plan was released at a time when the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta is in its worst-ever ecological crisis. Commercial salmon fishing on California ocean waters has been banned for an unprecedented 3 years, due to the collapse of the Sacramento and Klamath River fall-run Chinook salmon populations. The Delta smelt, once the most abundant fish in the entire Delta, has become functionally extinct in the wild, with no Delta smelt caught in the California Department of Fish and Wildlife’s Fall Midwater Trawl survey for the past seven years.

Yet Governor Gavin Newsom has been relentlessly pushing forward with the Delta Tunnel and Sites Reservoir projects and the voluntary agreements that would hasten the extinction of Sacramento winter and spring-run Chinook salmon, Central Valley steelhead, green sturgeon, white sturgeon, Delta smelt, longfin smelt and other fish species.

If built, the Delta Tunnel would on average increase State Water Project deliveries to Big Ag oligarchs and Southern California water brokers by 22 percent, according to the written testimony of a DWR engineer at a State Water Board hearing, when reduced water exports are what’s desperately needed to restore imperiled fish populations in the San Francisco Bay-Delta.