State officials criticize Trump's Delta water plan

Three state agencies objected to the plan in letters to the Bureau of Reclamation last month, signaling a new round of confrontation with the Trump administration over how California's giant water systems should be operated.

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THE U.S. plan would boost water withdrawals even in dry years, one official said. Above, the Delta-Mendota Canal in Los Banos, Calif.

(BRIAN VAN DER BRUG Los Angeles Times)

The push to send more water to farms is supported by some growers in the Central Valley, who have long condemned state policies as harmful to agriculture. For years, drivers on the valley's highways have seen their signs and billboards with slogans such as “Stop Dumping Our Farm Water & Jobs In the Ocean.” Trump has questioned why the state should keep more water in rivers to help “a tiny little fish” such as the Delta smelt.

But California officials warned the Trump administration that pumping more water into the federal aqueducts will bring significant negative consequences for fish and the Delta environment.

The federal proposal would increase water withdrawals in dry years as well as wet ones, leading to less water in the Delta, which would cause “significant impacts to native fish species,” Diane Riddle, an official of the State Water Resources Control Board, said in one letter.

She said modeling estimates show that the Trump administration’s proposal would particularly harm fish during dry years, “when species are already stressed by dry conditions.”

State and federal pumping plants in the Delta, which send water into the canals of the State Water Project and the Central Valley Project, often have to limit operation to leave enough water for threatened and endangered fish.