Newsom Administration Continues to Push Voluntary Agreements

California State Capitol by Ron Stork

Governor Newsom’s Administration continues to push forward Voluntary Settlement Agreements (VSAs or VAs) in lieu of the State Water Resources Control Board’s ideas on how to update the decades-late update to the SF Bay/Delta Water Quality Control Plan. In the Plan update, the Board’s qualified scientists and staff would set water management requirements to preserve the health and water quality of the Bay-Delta. VAs, although marketed as collaborative agreements to achieve the same outcome, have largely been closed-door negotiations that have excluded environmental advocates.

In the meantime, native species are on the brink of extinction, and salmon populations in the Central Valley are in such dire condition that the commercial and recreational salmon fishery has been closed along the coast of California and part of Oregon.

The VAs in the San Joaquin Valley for the Tuolumne and Stanislaus River are in the most advanced planning stages and, as a consequence of being voluntary, would largely preserve the status quo for diverters on these rivers.

There are VAs on the Sacramento Valley side, the most important being those of the Sacramento Valley settlement contractors, which control most of the federal CVP water in the Valley. Endangered species recovery in the Sacramento Valley will be impossible if the state and Reclamation cannot make cuts to deliveries to save water during droughts (which happened by negotiation last year).