Recent presidential actions aim to boost water supplies for Southern California—but how would they actually work? We spoke with our adjunct fellow Greg Gartrell to better understand the orders and their potential impact.

What is the Trump administration proposing?

There are two orders now in play.

A January 20 memorandum directs the Secretary of Commerce and the Secretary of the Interior to “route more water from the Sacramento–San Joaquin Delta to other parts of the state.” In practice, this means that the National Marine Fisheries Service and the US Fish and Wildlife Service will take the lead in revising federal rules to allow increased pumping of water from the Sacramento–San Joaquin Delta by the federal Central Valley Project (CVP) and the State Water Project (SWP).

The January 24 executive order goes much further and directs the secretaries to “immediately take actions to override existing activities that unduly burden efforts to maximize water deliveries.”

What problem is the administration trying to solve?

The orders focus on the wildfire emergency in Southern California and seek to “ensure that California has what it needs to prevent and fight these fires and others in the future.” This is to be accomplished by increasing water supply through the two projects, principally by relaxing environmental laws.

As background, the federal Central Valley Project supplies water mainly to farmers in the Central Valley and urban areas in the Bay Area (Contra Costa and Santa Clara counties). The State Water Project supplies most of its water to farmers in the San Joaquin Valley and to urban users in Southern California and the Bay Area.

Today, the projects are operated jointly under a Coordinated Operation Agreement that meets state and federal regulations to protect water quality and endangered species. Central to these agreements are Biological Opinions (BiOps) prepared by federal fish and wildlife agencies that prescribe how the projects are to operate to protect the endangered salmon, steelhead trout, Delta smelt, and sturgeon that inhabit the Delta and its watershed.

The reliability of supplies from these two projects has declined over the past two decades due to a combination of increasingly intense droughts and regulations to protect endangered species. The administration seeks to increase supply, ostensibly to help with wildfire emergencies.

Will increased water supply from the projects help fight fires in Southern California?

As has been widely reported, the short answer to this is no. The reservoirs in Southern California were well above their historic average when the fires broke out. The problems were mostly with the local firefighting infrastructure, not water deliveries.  That will be the case in most years, even during droughts.

More specifically, there is no physical connection between the federal Central Valley Project and Southern California; the State Water Project does the job of supplying water to Southern California. Most federal water exported from the Delta goes to farms in the San Joaquin Valley. That is the part of the water supply system the federal government has the most control over.

What are the policy challenges facing implementation of the executive orders? 

The orders are uncharted territory for water policy in California in at least two ways, so it is hard to say how they might play out.

Federal law—including the Central Valley Project Improvement Act—clearly states that the Central Valley Project must comply with all state water quality, endangered species, and water rights laws and will be operated jointly with the state through a Coordinated Operation Agreement. The January 24 executive order appears to direct federal agencies to ignore those provisions.

The proposed revision of the BiOps is also likely to be complicated. During the first Trump Administration, it took almost three years to complete the revision with the goal of increasing exports from the Delta. An immediate problem arose: those revised BiOps were in conflict with state laws and regulations protecting endangered species. For this reason, the State Water Project would have to comply with state regulations, making the Coordinated Operation Agreement unworkable, landing all of this in court.

Are there any unintended consequences of these executive orders to watch out for?

Well, as I said, this is uncharted territory. To my knowledge, the federal government has never stepped in and taken away the ability of a state to manage water rights and water quality. I have to believe all the western states will be watching this closely.

But one thing is not being talked about, and it should be. If the Central Valley Project were to “go it alone” and ignore state water rights and water quality laws, it may have significant unintended water supply consequences.

Today, under the Coordinated Operation Agreement, the Central Valley Project and the State Water Project share the burden of meeting state and federal water quality standards in the Delta. To keep the Delta fresh enough for use by cities and farms, a lot of water has to flow through the Delta and into San Francisco Bay. Otherwise, the tides would salt up the Delta and make the water unusable. During droughts, the amount of water that has to flow out of the Delta for salinity control is four times the amount used to protect endangered species.

If the Central Valley Project takes more water out of the Delta, the burden to meet water quality standards would fall on the State Water Project. This would likely lead to less water available for Southern California, not more, which I don’t think is the intention of the orders.

This is all speculation at this point. We won’t know what is likely to happen until the various cabinet secretaries make their recommendations and there are concrete actions. But this is a reminder that water in California is complicated—and that seemingly simple policies can be difficult to implement.