Restore the Delta Calls for Audit of Billions of Public Spending on Delta Tunnel

Stockton, CA – At a time when Governor Newsom's May revision budget proposal slashes overtime pay for caregivers, consumer access to care and nursing home oversight, the environmentally destructive and unjust Delta Tunnel is costing taxpayers $1 million per day, according to the Department of Water Resources.

Restore the Delta (RTD) has decided that it’s time for an audit. Yesterday the group submitted a formal request to the Joint Legislative Audit Committee urging a full audit of the Department of Water Resources’ (DWR) spending on the controversial Delta Conveyance Project (DCP) and associated Voluntary Agreements. 

“The request comes amid rising public costs, incomplete project plans, and growing legal and environmental concerns,” according to an RTD press release.

According to the letter, DWR will have spent nearly $1 billion on various iterations of tunnel project planning, with projected construction costs exceeding $20 billion before inflation or unforeseen expenses. 

“Yet the project lacks a finalized operations plan, an enforceable environmental impact report, and relies on expired water rights. Additionally, questions regarding refunds due to water agencies from DWR in the hundred of millions of dollars remain unanswered,” RTD revealed.

The letter states: 

Various iterations of the Delta Conveyance project have been proposed over decades, including the peripheral canal, BDCP, WaterFix, and the Bay Delta Conservation Plan, all of which faced significant opposition from Tribes, the public, and environmental groups. Rejected by California voters in 1981, this project continues to be pushed forward under the guise of a ‘climate solution,’ but inflexible, grey infrastructure that negatively impacts the Delta is antiquated and ill equipped to handle the anticipated extreme range of hydrological changes. Despite this, DWR has spent nearly $700 million in public funding on these numerous iterations of the ‘Tunnel’ over the past 15 years, and proposes at least $20.1 billion in construction costs before inflation, tariffs and other unforeseen costs. As stated by Director of DWR, Karla Nemeth, at the April 3, 2025 Senate Budget Subcommittee No. 2 hearing, the project is currently costing $1 million each day. Additionally, there are unanswered questions for the public regarding hundreds of millions of dollars in refunds due to State Water Contractors from DWR, and problematic findings in Urban Management Water Plans approved by DWR for Southern California water districts indicating multiple violations of current water codes.

Restore the Delta also highlights that modeling for the project assumes the unapproved Voluntary Agreements will move forward – despite broad opposition from tribes, environmental justice groups, and fishing communities, and evidence that these agreements violate state water law and environmental protections.

“California cannot afford to throw billions of public dollars at a project that doesn’t have legal, environmental, or fiscal footing,” said Barbara Barrigan-Parrilla, Executive Director of Restore the Delta. “The public deserves transparency, and the Legislature must hold DWR accountable for its use of taxpayer funds, its disregard for the Delta’s communities, and its ongoing failures to comply with state law.” 

“The letter, backed by research into DWR’s permitting gaps, financing risks, and conflicts with local housing and water reliability plans, calls for an immediate audit to assess how public funds have been used and whether the project can deliver on its promises. DWR’s approved regional water planning documents violate multiple sections of California water and general planning codes presently and base future water management planning on DCP operations many decades into the future. Recent polling conducted by Goodwin Strategies indicates that 62% of Californians prefer public spending on local infrastructure water projects over the Delta Conveyance Project,” Restore the Delta wrote.

Background: San Francisco Bay-Delta ecosystem in unprecedented collapse

The request for a legislative audit of the Delta Tunnel was proposed as the San Francisco Bay-Delta estuary is in its worst-ever crisis, as evidenced by the closure of commercial salmon fishing off the California Coast for an unprecedented third year in a row, due to the collapse of the Sacramento and Klamath River Fall Chinook Salmon populations. Meanwhile, Sacramento River Spring Chinook and Winter Chinook Salmon — listed under both the state and federal endangered species acts — continue to decline.    

Yet the Delta Tunnel will only make the ecological crisis in the Delta even worse, since the project will divert vast quantities of water out of the Sacramento River before it flows through the Delta — when what the fish and ecosystem need is reduced water exports out of the estuary to agribusiness and Southern California water agencies.

The testimony of DWR engineer Amardeep Singh reveals that the Delta Conveyance Project (DCP) will increase water deliveries from the Delta by 22%, according to an analysis by the California Water Impact Network (C-WIN).

“DCP operation will not decrease water supply for Central Valley Project (CVP) contractors and will increase water supply for SWP Table A contractors by 22 percent,” Singh states on page 2 of his testimony. 

Moreover, during drought periods when fish are already strained by low flows and high temperatures, the DCP would increase deliveries by 24%: static1.squarespace.com/…

The data from the Pacific Fishery Management Council (PFMC) documents the abysmal situation that Sacramento River Fall Chinook Salmon, once the driver of the West Coast salmon fishery, and the Spring and Winter Chinook are now in.

Between 1996-2005 the average return for fall-run Chinook on the mainstem Sacramento River was 79,841 spawning salmon. In 2023 that number fell drastically to only 3,560 salmon – a 95% decline, according to an analysis by the Golden State Salmon Association.

Spring-run Chinook have also experienced a staggering 95% decline due to a lack of cold water flows in Central Valley salmon rivers. The average wild and hatchery spring-run return plummeted from 28,238 fish in 2021 to just 1,231 salmon in 2023.

And spawner escapement in 2024 of endangered Sacramento River Winter Chinook, an endangered species under both the state and federal Endangered Species Acts, was estimated to be only 789 adults and 578 jacks (two-year-olds). 

Delta Smelt is functionally extinct in the wild

I have written extensively about this in previous articles, but it’s crucial in understanding how bad the situation is in the once robust Bay-Delta estuary to review the current status of Delta Smelt and  other pelagic species on the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta.

For the seventh year in a row, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife CDFW found no Delta Smelt in the California Department of Fish and Wildlife’s Fall Midwater Trawl Survey in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta in 2024. This 2 to 3 inch fish is an indicator species that has been villainized by Donald Trump and his corporate agribusiness allies for supposedly being a “worthless fish,”  

It is significant that zero Delta smelt were caught in the survey despite the release of tens of thousands of hatchery-raised Delta smelt into the Delta over the past few years by the state and federal governments.

“The 2024 abundance index was 0 and continues the trend of no catch in the FMWT since 2017,” reported  Taylor Rohlin, CDFW Environmental Scientist Bay Delta Region in a Jan. 2 memo to Erin Chappell, Regional Manager Bay Delta Region: nrm.dfg.ca.gov/...

“No Delta Smelt were collected from any stations during our survey months of September-December. While FMWT did not catch any Delta Smelt, it does not mean there were no smelt present, but the numbers are very low and below the effective detection threshold by most sampling methods,” she wrote.

The CDFW has conducted the Fall Midwater Trawl Survey (FMWT) to index the fall abundance of pelagic (open water) fishes annually since 1967 (except 1974 and 1979), Rohlin stated.

Why is this survey so important?  It’s because “the FMWT equipment and methods have remained consistent since the survey’s inception, allowing the indices to be compared across time,” Rohlin wrote. “These relative abundance indices are not intended to approximate population sizes; however, indices reflect general patterns in population change (Polansky et al. 2019).”

Other surveys last year also reveal the functional extinction of Delta smelt in the wild. A weekly survey by the US Fish and Wildlife Service  targeting Delta smelt caught only one smelt in the summer of 2024. “A late April IEP juvenile fish survey (the 20-mm Survey) caught several juvenile Delta smelt in the same area,” noted scientist Tom Cannon in his blog on the California Sportfishing Protection Alliance website: calsport.org/...   

In a January post on Truth Social, President Donald Trump falsely claimed that Governor Gavin Newsom “refused to sign the water restoration declaration put before him that would have allowed millions of gallons of water, from excess rain and snow melt from the North, to flow daily into many parts of California, including the areas that are currently burning in a virtually apocalyptic way. He wanted to protect an essentially worthless fish called a smelt, by giving it less water (it didn’t work!), but didn’t care about the people of California.”

I break down the four falsehoods that Trump made in this post here: www.dailykos.com/...

To summarize, the Delta Smelt is definitely not a “worthless fish.” In fact, the Delta Smelt is a key indicator species that demonstrates the health of the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, the largest estuary on the West Coast of the Americas. The 2 to 3 inch fish that smells like a cucumber is found only in the Delta.

It was once the most abundant fish in the Delta, numbering in the millions, but now is functionally extinct in the wild due to massive water exports to agribusiness and other factors, including invasive species, toxics and pollution, over the past several decades.  

The significance of the Delta smelt’s role in the Bay-Delta Estuary cannot be overstated.

”Delta Smelt are the thread that ties the Delta together with the river system,” said Caleen Sisk, Chief of the Winnemem Wintu Tribe. “We all should understand how that affects all the water systems in the state. They are the irreplaceable thread that holds the Delta system together with Chinook salmon.”

Other pelagic fish species are in free-fall also

The other fish species collected in the fall survey — striped bass, longfin smelt, Sacramento splittail and threadfin shad — continued their dramatic decline since 1967 when the State Water Project went into effect. Only the threadfin shad showed an increase from the last year’s index — and the population is still at just a fraction of its former abundance.

The survey uses an “abundance index,” a relative measure of abundance, to document general patterns in population change.

The 2024 abundance index for striped bass, an introduced gamefish, was 136, representing a 49% decrease from last year’s index.

The index was 175 for longfin smelt, a native fish species, representing a 62% decrease from last year’s index.

The index was 577 for threadfin shad, an introduced forage fish, representing a 12% increase from last year’s index.

The index for American shad, an introduced gamefish, was 1341, representing a 45% decrease from last year’s index.

The index for Sacramento splittail, a native minnow species, was 0, with 0 fish caught.

To put things truly In perspective, one must understand that these substantial decreases were from already abysmally low levels of abundance.

Between 1967 and 2020, the state’s Fall Midwater Trawl abundance indices for striped bass, Delta smelt, longfin smelt, American shad, splittail and threadfin shad have declined by 99.7, 100, 99.96, 67.9, 100, and 95%, respectively, according to the California Sportfishing Protection Alliance.

The graphs in this CDFW memo graphically illustrate how dramatic the declines in fish populations have been over the years: nrm.dfg.ca.gov/…  

Follow The Big Ag Money

Newsom’s push for the Delta Tunnel may have something to do with the fact that Beverly Hills Billionaires Linda and Stewart Resnick, owners of the Wonderful Company and the largest orchard fruit growers in the world, are among the largest contributors to Governor Newsom and hosted his 2022 anti-recall campaign in a fundraising letter.

The Resnicks have donated a total of $431,600 to Governor Gavin Newsom since 2018, including $250,000 to Stop The Republican Recall Of Governor Newsom and $64,800 to Newsom For California Governor 2022. Not only did the Resnick's donate $250,000 to Stop the Republican Recall in 2022, they hosted a fundraising letter to persuade wealthy potential donors to contribute to the effort.

Newsom received a total of $755,198 in donations from agribusiness in the 2018 election cycle, based on the data from www.followthemoney.org. That figure includes a combined $116,800 from Stewart and Lynda Resnick and $58,400 from E.J. Gallo, combined with $579,998 in the agriculture donations category.

But the Resnicks are also huge contributors to the University of California system and other universities in the state. In 2019 they made a donation of $750 million to Caltech and in 2022 made a $50 million donation to UC Davis, in addition to contributing millions to UCLA, CSU Fresno and other universities over the years.  

The Resnicks have pushed for increased water exports from the Delta for agribusiness and the construction of the Delta Tunnel for many years.

The Resnicks have donated many millions of dollars to both the Democratic and Republican parties and to candidates for both parties over the years. They were instrumental in the creation of the Monterey Amendment, a 1994 pact between Department of Water Resources and State Water Project contractors, that allowed them to obtain their 57 percent stake in the Kern Water Bank: https://www.watereducation.org/aquapedia/monterey-amendment