Newsom Administration’s Final Water Portfolio Rests on Environmentally Harmful Foundation

SACRAMENTO—Today the Newsom Administration released its final version of a catalog of projects to help California resolve existing and anticipated water challenges. The final version is only mildly different from the draft version released in 2019 and rests on a foundation of water projects that are neither innovative nor problem-solving.

The portfolio continues to depend on construction of a water conveyance--or tunnel--that will divert water from the San Francisco Bay-Delta. It also continues to endorse environmentally harmful storage projects, like Sites Reservoir, and promote unenforceable “voluntary agreements” to avoid effectively regulating large-scale water contractors.

Statement of Kathryn Phillips, Director, Sierra Club California:

“The much ballyhooed water portfolio, that the governor originally promised would identify ways for regions to become more resilient to climate change and accompanying water system uncertainties, falls well short of its promised mark. It is a catalog, not a plan. And it relies on an expensive boondoggle of a project--a Delta diversion--left over from the 1940s, when climate change wasn’t on most peoples’ radar.

“While the document acknowledges the need to preserve natural ecosystems, the projects and policies it advances would put those ecosystems and water quality for certain communities at risk. If this was implemented today, we could count on a rapid decline of water quality and economic health in the Stockton region, a stagnation of the San Francisco Bay, and a heavier ratepayer burden without improved water access in Southern California.

“Somehow the state needs to make a clean break from the same old, tired ideas of the past that have drowned its water policy.”