On January 30, 2024, Governor Newsom announced California’s first-ever strategy to protect the future of salmon in our state's waterways. Among the strategy’s priorities are removing barriers and modernizing infrastructure for salmon migration, restoring habitat, and protecting water flows in key rivers at the right times. Incredible, right?
Salmon in our state are not doing well. Last year in 2023, with projections showing the Chinook salmon population at historic lows, the state’s salmon fishing season was closed. Some tribes even canceled their religious and cultural harvests for the first time ever.
These historic lows pushed Governor Newsom to create the Salmon Strategy that specifies six priorities and 71 actions to build healthy, thriving salmon populations in California.
The actions and projects that Newsom lists include several in our region. Klamath River dam removal and restoration are touted. The future dam removal on the Eel River and potential diversions are discussed, as well. Governor Newsom’s Salmon Strategy puts on record his goal to have these projects either completed or approved by state regulatory bodies before he leaves office in January 2027. These projects were both already underway prior to this additional promise from Newsom.
Just one month prior to the release of the Salmon Strategy, on December 21, 2023, California’s Department of Water Resources (DWR) approved the $15 billion Delta Conveyance Project to build a below-ground tunnel diverting water from the Sacramento River south, underneath the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, to the Bethany Reservoir (6,480,000 cubic meters). Water in this reservoir is used by both the State Water Project (irrigating 750,000 acres) and the Central Valley Project (irrigating 3 million acres) for primarily agricultural purposes, as opposed to commonly touted residential uses.
This tunnel will be 45 miles long, 36 feet in diameter and 18 inches thick, and run from the Hood community, through two new intakes, into the Bethany Reservoir at the start of the California Aqueduct, bypassing the San Joaquin River section of the Delta.
How does this relate to Newsom’s Salmon Strategy, you may wonder? According to the State’s companion explainer for the Draft Environmental Impact Report for Delta Conveyance Project from July 2022, changes in flow at and downstream of the approved Delta Tunnel’s intakes “have the potential to decrease migration rates, alter migration routing, reduce availability of rearing habitat, and increase exposure to predation for winter-run Chinook salmon, Central Valley spring-run Chinook salmon, and Central Valley steelhead."
This tunnel will fundamentally change the entire state’s water management system. Once built, predicted by 2040, thousands of acres of wetlands would have to be restored in order to offset the “potentially significant impacts” on the rare fish, according to the DWR. Environmentalists and other critics of this project say that this is a slow and inefficient way to create habitat for these at-risk fish populations.
Whether or not Newsom’s Salmon Strategy is a sad effort to distract concerned people from his Delta Tunnel, it’s certainly not enough. Critics will continue to voice their opposition for the Delta Conveyance Project. The continued prioritization of agriculture in the state’s water supply management should open our eyes to Governor Newsom’s true priorities.