[env-trinity] CalMatters: Trump reignites California water wars + Skelton Column: Newsom hopes to broker a peace treaty in California’s water war. Some worry he’ll cave to Trump

[Tom Stokely]

https://calmatters.org/commentary/trump-reignites-california-water-wars/



Trump reignites California water wars
   
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California’s decades-old conflict over distribution of water among farmers, urban users and environmental enhancement bears an uncanny resemblance to the decades of sectarian struggles in the Middle East — minus the bloodshed.

In both arenas, periodic efforts are made to forge enduring peace agreements, but just when they seem to be bearing fruit, they are undermined by some new flareup.

Gov. Gavin Newsom has been trying to finalize what predecessor Jerry Brown began, a series of so-called “voluntary agreements” that would shift water from San Joaquin Valley farmers to bolster flows through the environmentally fragile Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. They are “so-called” because agricultural water districts were willing to entertain such deals only because the state Water Resources Control Board was poised to unilaterally impose curbs on farmers’ supplies.

However, the state is not the only major power in water wars. Much of California’s agricultural water is supplied by the federal government, mostly through its Central Valley Project, and when Donald Trump became president, he promised farmers he’d protect their interests.

Last week, Trump went to Bakersfield to personally declare he’s making good on that promise. His Bureau of Reclamation finalized a new operating policy that would provide more water to farmers, whose supplies had already been squeezed by a series of court orders.

Trump told a cheering crowd that the new plan will bring “a massive amount of water for the use of California farmers and ranchers and all these communities that are suffering” and criticized state officials for allowing “millions and millions of gallons (to be) wasted and poured into the ocean.”

 “Maybe we can get the governor to come along and really be friendly on this one,” Trump said — but even before the president spoke, Newsom had denounced the new federal plan and promised to fight it in the courts.

Newsom’s office said he “will file legal action in the coming days … to protect highly imperiled fish species close to extinction.” However, Newsom also sent a letter to Interior Secretary David Bernhardt saying, “We remain committed to working to resolve these remaining differences in (the) coming weeks and months.”

Bernhardt is a former lobbyist for California’s Westlands Water District, which supplies farmers on the west side of the San Joaquin Valley. He had praised the new plan as “a significant milestone in executing on President Trump’s commitment to deliver safe and reliable water for communities in California to the agricultural and environmental benefit of the entire country.”

So where does Trump’s action leave the months of negotiations on the voluntary agreements Newsom sees as a peace treaty in California’s water wars?

Up in the air.

Having Trump on their side bolsters the farmers’ complaints about being compelled to give up water to help fish migrations in the Delta while simultaneously facing new state limitations on tapping underground aquifers via wells. They are unlikely, therefore, to finalize the voluntary agreements until they see how Trump’s move plays out.

Newsom can tie up the federal policy in the courts, at least for a while. He also must contend with environmental groups that never liked the voluntary agreement approach, favoring the mandatory farm water cuts proposed by the Water Resources Control Board.

Everything probably will be on hold until the contending factions know whether Trump is re-elected in November. If he is, the farmers could play a stronger game. If he’s succeeded by a Democrat, Newsom would regain the upper hand and a Democratic president would be expected to strengthen environmentalists.

The stakes are huge for everyone involved — and for California itself.

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https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-02-24/skelton-newsom-trump-california-water-wars

Column: Newsom hopes to broker a peace treaty in California’s water war. Some worry he’ll cave to Trump
The Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta near the town of Rio Vista.(Luis Sinco / Los Angeles Times)By GEORGE SKELTONCAPITOL JOURNAL COLUMNIST FEB. 24, 2020 12:01 AMSACRAMENTO —  
Gov. Gavin Newsom may be piloting a lifeboat that will rescue the sinking California Delta. Or he may be in water over his head on a doomed mission.

The governor gets angry with skeptics who say he’s being delusional. But history sides with the doubters.

“I love reading all that, ‘Hey, he’s naive. He’s being misled,’” Newsom recently told a forum sponsored by the nonpartisan Public Policy Institute of California, his voice rising with a touch of sarcasm.

“It means we’re doing something a little different.”

No California water hole has been fought over more than the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta. It’s right up there with the Owens Valley and the state’s share of the Colorado River.

The delta supplies water for 27 million people and irrigates 3 million acres. California’s economy depends, in large part, on its health.

But the delta’s ecology has been declining, primarily because water from rivers has been diverted for agriculture before it reaches the West Coast’s largest estuary. And the water that does make it there has been overpumped through fish-chomping monstrosities into southbound aqueducts.

This has devastated native fish — salmon, steelhead, smelt — and prompted courts to occasionally tighten the spigots on water pumped to San Joaquin Valley farms and Southern California cities.
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To succeed in fixing the delta, Newsom must navigate through eternally warring interests: San Joaquin Valley agriculture and the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California on one side, and delta farmers, the coastal fishing industry and environmentalists on the other.

Making the current dispute even more intense, the president and the governor now are in a spat over water for the first time in modern history. Newsom got dragged in reluctantly.

“I don’t need to be told, ‘You need to be tough against the Trump administration,’” Newsom said at the PPIC forum. “Give me a break. I know that.”

Newsom’s delta rescue plan basically involves everyone getting along, compromising and singing “Kumbaya.” But that normally hasn’t worked in the past.

Water wars are second nature in the West. California has been fighting over water since statehood.

In 2009, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger muscled a ballyhooed bill through the Legislature that was heralded as a wonderwork. It was supposed to restore the delta and stabilize water deliveries. So far, it has belly-flopped.

It led to Gov. Jerry Brown proposing construction of two monster tunnels to siphon fresh Sacramento River water from the north delta directly into the southbound aqueducts, reducing use of the fish-killing pumps. But delta communities and environmentalists loudly protested the loss of fresh water. And the project’s $17-billion cost was too much for many water districts anyway.

So Newsom scaled back the proposal to one tunnel, which is still being planned. Nothing about it is certain.

Newsom “seems to be chasing this white whale of voluntary agreements,” says Doug Obegi, senior attorney for the Natural Resources Defense Council.

“It feels like the state is trying to adapt more to Trump [environmental protection] rollbacks rather than forcing the Trump administration to adjust to California values.”

The Newsom administration denies it’s leaning toward Trump’s views.

Newsom has pulled the warring interests — mainly San Joaquin Valley irrigators, the Metropolitan Water District and environmentalists — into efforts to reach voluntary agreements on river flows, delta pumping and habitat improvements.

Newsom is so committed to the negotiations that in September he vetoed state Senate leader Toni Atkins’ anti-Trump environmental protection bill, SB 1. Under the measure, if Trump weakened federal environmental protections, they’d automatically be adopted by California. But water districts threatened to walk out of talks with Newsom if he signed the legislation. So he didn’t.

“I’m trying to put together a peace plan in the delta,” says Wade Crowfoot, Newsom’s secretary of the Natural Resources Agency.

“I don’t want to be a Pollyanna, but there’s beginning to be a sea change in many of these water users. They’re just tired of fighting.”

But why would agriculture interests compromise with Newsom, at least until they learn whether Trump can win reelection in November? His interior secretary is one of their own: former Westlands Water District lobbyist David Bernhardt.

Because, Crowfoot says, the state still can set environmental protection regulations that govern both the federal Central Valley and state water projects.

But environmentalists fear that Newsom will cave in to Trump and valley growers and offer a deal too good for them to reject.

Last November, the Trump administration announced plans to roll back endangered species protections and export more delta water to Central Valley Project customers. The state threatened to sue but never did — despite loud pressure from environmentalists — until last week. That’s when Trump flew to California and flamboyantly signed an order implementing the plan.

Newsom sued, but expressed hope that the state, the feds and the warring parties could compromise. Then he’d drop the suit.

“You want to get into lawsuits? You want to screw this person, screw that person, spending seven years getting nothing done?” Newsom asserted testily at the Jan. 29 PPIC forum. “I’m the wrong person in this job. That’s so easy.…

“The world is changing. We have to change with it.… Putting the old binaries aside, getting off our high horse. Recognizing that we need each other.”

If Newsom can pull this off, it would truly be a remarkable achievement. But can irrigators and environmentalists fit in the same lifeboat? They never have.




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