The Los Angeles Times took a deep dive into the controversy surrounding the Newsom administration’s agreement to pay a private investment firm $180 million for a relatively small amount of additional water for Sacramento River salmon.
At roughly $36,000 per acre-foot, dozens of times what cities pay for a single year of water on average, the water comes at a steep price. As Barry Nelson, an advisor for the Golden State Salmon Association, told the LA Times, “This is extraordinarily expensive water… [it] seems like a really bad investment for the public.”
In addition to its exorbitant cost to California taxpayers, the agreement leaves the amount of water provided in any given year largely up to Reclamation District 108.
Peter Drekmeier, policy director at Yosemite Rivers Alliance, raised similar concerns about the agreement’s value and accountability: “The taxpayers are expected to pay top dollar for an amount of water that’s not really going to move the needle, and that’s just wrong… How do you track this water? Are we really getting what we’re paying for? We know it’s really, really expensive water, and we don’t know how much of it’s actually going to end up in the ecosystem.”
Meanwhile, the Newsom administration is after more agreements like this one that environmental groups cite as a prime example of the types of deals that voluntary agreements depend on in the Bay-Delta Plan update. On October 28-29, the State Water Resources Control Board is scheduled to consider the voluntary agreements (VAs) as part of new rules governing water in the Delta.
Environmental groups across the Delta and California are raising concerns about these agreements’ impact on critical ecosystems and cost to taxpayers. With the total price tag potentially reaching $5.6 billion compared to initial estimates of $1.1 billion, advocates are calling on the State Water Board to recognize the VA framework as costly and ineffective.
Read the full Los Angeles Times piece here.
