Sacramento Bee, 2/3/26. Regional water agencies on Monday urged the State Water Resources Control Board to advance a voluntary agreement option in the updated Bay-Delta plan that would give agencies more flexibility in how they meet state water rules.
Under Healthy Rivers and Landscapes, the regional agencies would not be mandated to strict river flow targets.
In a letter reviewed by The Sacramento Bee, the Sacramento Regional Water Authority wrote to state water regulators on behalf of anticipated American River Healthy Rivers and Landscapes participants, asserting that relying only on the regulatory pathway would create severe “trade-offs” for regional water supplies and river ecosystems.
The regulatory pathway, meanwhile, is the board’s framework that would impose an “unimpaired-flow requirement,” which would require about half of river flows to keep moving downstream instead of being stored in winter and spring.
The flow rules would apply to water users outside the voluntary program, which local water agencies say could undermine the state’s water supply stability and the Delta ecosystem.
Under the current proposal, the regulatory pathway could also be imposed on Healthy Rivers and Landscapes participants if the State Water Board concludes the voluntary approach is falling short. For now, the draft does not clearly define the specific conditions or decision-making process that would trigger that shift.
“We would like to note at the outset that we believe the Bay-Delta Plan Updates are ready for adoption, with the ability to collaboratively refine specific points at a future date,” the letter read. “The comments in this letter are intended to (…) create an awareness of these trade-offs as the State Board prepares for Plan adoption.”
Regional agencies press for a balanced path forward
Monday’s letter recognizes that the regulatory pathway exists as a fallback, but it mainly warns the state water board not to set up the plan in a way that would push the voluntary agreement pathway to fail and trigger the regulatory option’s flow rules.
In a 19-page letter, the agencies echoed concerns raised by Andy Fecko of the Placer County Water Agency and Jim Peifer of the Sacramento Regional Water Authority on Thursday, warning that the flow rule spelled out in the regulatory approach could destabilize groundwater storage in the American River basin and raise river temperatures for salmon.
Citing the proposed plan’s projection that groundwater storage in the American River basin could decline by more than 1 million acre-feet, the regional water officials said the “decline to groundwater storage within the American River region would be devastating and completely infeasible.”
“It would thoroughly deplete the American River region’s efforts to address climate change and force a return to unsustainable pumping, reversing the very progress the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA) seeks to achieve,” the letter added, referring to the state law aimed at restoring “critically overdrafted” groundwater basins to sustainability by 2040.
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