The California Environmental Flows Framework is one of several proposed approaches to protecting aquatic life in major rivers that flow into the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta.

The State Water Resources Control Board is weighing new rules for its Bay-Delta Plan Update that would require higher percentages of water to remain in rivers that drain into the Delta, where giant pumps send water south. Such a move would reduce the amount of water available for export to cities and farms in the South Bay Area, the Central Valley and Southern California.

A coalition of dozens of water suppliers is pushing the water board to adopt an alternative plan they contend would better serve fish and wildlife needs.

“The old approach hasn’t worked,” said David Guy, president of the Northern California Water Association, referring to the state’s decades-old rules requiring a fixed river flow schedule maintained at or below a certain amount. “It hasn’t benefited fish and wildlife in most instances. It hasn’t helped with water supply reliability for cities, disadvantaged communities, farms or managed wetlands.” 

Read Main Article: New Scientific Strategy Helps Make Case for Holistic Management of California Rivers

The water suppliers’ plan – one favored by Gov. Newsom and various state and federal agencies – includes a broad portfolio of options for improving and expanding aquatic habitat needed to recover fish populations in the Delta and rivers in its watershed.

“The science points to the fact that it’s a combined solution: habitat, flows and fish passage improvements,” said Alexandra Biering, senior policy advocate for the California Farm Bureau, which supports the water suppliers’ alternative.

An approach that clearly states when and how much water will be needed in streams each year for wildlife would also allow urban suppliers to better plan for more extreme weather events under climate change, said Nina Hawk, who manages Delta policy and programs for the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California.

Like the California Environmental Flows Framework, the water suppliers’ proposal includes such environmentally beneficial strategies as inundating floodplains to create food-rich rearing grounds for young salmon.

“Getting water out on the floodplains is great,” said Sarah Yarnell, who helped draft the framework. But, she said, “the scientists’ strategy is more holistic, embracing improvements to both flows and habitat that are needed to support a broader range of aquatic species’ needs year-round.”

Embracing more holistic water management is one thing. Implementing it on streams without encroaching on water rights is another.

Brian Gray, a senior fellow with the Public Policy Institute of California, said leaving more water in streams for fish will require sacrifices from cities and farmers and more efficient oversight. He and other institute researchers have recommended that the State Water Board use “ecosystem water budgets” that would act as a priority water right with clear environmental objectives.

“Everyone else has quantified water rights … and the environment doesn’t have that,” Gray said. 

The budgets would be based on hydrologic conditions and the biological needs of aquatic species and require timely and accurate tracking of how much water is being diverted from the stream.

Ideally, Gray said, an independent trustee would oversee the budgets, allocating, trading and storing the environmental water with other users in the watersheds.

A budgeted approach is being used to restore the San Joaquin River. The restoration program, which stems from an 18-year legal fight between environmentalists and federal dam operators, aims to return native fish populations to “good condition” below Friant Dam near Fresno while minimizing the loss of water supplies to downstream users. Similar flow schedules have been set on stretches of Northern California’s Trinity River and Putah Creek.