A hard look at the 3,000-page Bay-Delta Plan

Alastair Bland, MAVEN’S NOTEBOOK

Staff Report in support of updates to the Bay-Delta Plan
Water Quality Control Plan for the SFBay/Sacramento/San Joaquin Delta Watershed

Is a state plan to update Delta water rules double counting restoration of water and habitat?

A historic effort to pump some life back into the San Joaquin River’s devastated salmon runs began more than 15 years ago as water users began releasing more water each year from Friant Dam for restoration purposes. Under the rules of the San Joaquin River Restoration Program, Friant water users are permitted to recapture that water downstream of the 153-mile project area, but only if doing so has no adverse impact on the environment downstream of the recapture point.

Now, as part of a state-backed plan known as the Voluntary Agreements that would rewrite Bay-Delta water and ecosystem management rules, the Friant water users have offered up to 50,000 acre-feet of annual Delta outflow to improve conditions for fish. To achieve this, they propose to forego recapturing the San Joaquin River restoration flows.

But environmental watchdog groups are crying foul. For one thing, Friant water users recapture very little water in the first place, so foregoing recapture would not produce much flow for the Delta. Opponents to Friant’s plan also assert that San Joaquin River Restoration flows that benefit the Delta ecosystem cannot be credited to the Voluntary Agreements. To do so, they say, would amount to double counting—using one block of water to meet the rules of two programs.