Top Wins for California Rivers in 2025

This year has not been free of major threats to California’s rivers. Several massive, expensive, unnecessary water projects that would harm water quality and river ecosystems are still being pushed by Governor Newsom. Wholesale rollbacks of environmental protections are being aggressively pursued by the federal government. But even so, there have been bright spots in 2025, and it’s time to celebrate them! 

#1 Making the case against the Triple Threat 

Speaking of those expensive, unnecessary and harmful water projects we just mentioned—the Triple Threat of Sites Reservoir (which would take even more water from our overallocated rivers), the Delta Tunnel (which would export even more water through the Delta to agribusinesses and developers), and the Voluntary Agreements (which would eviscerate the rules for how much water can be taken)—progress is being made in the fight to oppose them.

In 2025 FOR put on a full court press to defeat the efforts to permit all these projects. Our team of experts testified in the state’s formal permitting proceedings about how the Tunnel and Sites would degrade water quality, harm salmon and other fisheries, expand California’s carbon footprint, and incentivize even more water projects to capture and divert even more water – and how more cost effective, climate-friendly and environmentally sound alternatives can meet our water supply needs in the future. Working with a broad and diverse coalition of interests, we also successfully derailed the governor’s attempt to ram through legislation that would have fast-tracked these projects by limiting the ability to review and challenge bad projects. 

#2 State backstop for National Wild & Scenic Rivers permanently extended 

The FOR-sponsored bill – enacted into law in 2018 after the first Trump administration came to power – that allowed California’s Natural Resources Secretary to add national wild and scenic rivers threatened by federal action to the state system was set to sunset this year. But working with Assemblyman Nick Schultz (D-Burbank), another FOR-sponsored bill was approved and signed by the governor in 2025 – this time without a sunset clause!

Among other things, the state system is intended to prevent dams and reservoirs, diversions and other infrastructure projects that harm wild rivers. The new law ensures that these critical protections are permanently available to any and all wild and scenic rivers at risk. 

#3 More Salmon return to the San Joaquin than ever

It’s been a long haul since 2006, but FOR’s leadership efforts to implement the historic San Joaquin River Restoration Settlement Agreement— which requires flows and fisheries to be restored in the once dewatered river—are paying off. The federal Restoration Program established by the Settlement has been working upstream of the Merced River confluence to remove fish barriers, increase flows, and reintroduce fish.

As a result, over 1,600 Chinook salmon, most originating from Restoration Program efforts, returned to the San Joaquin system this spring. About 1,200 were lured to the Tuolumne River’s cooler, higher flows and 394 returned to the mainstem’s spawning reach. This is the seventh year in a row that spring-run adults returned from the ocean to spawn. 2025 also marks the start of construction on the Program’s first major fish passage project, at Sack Dam.  

…and the Klamath too! 

Only a year after the last of four dams came down on the Klamath River, an estimated 10,000 Chinook salmon have made it past the former dam sites to spawning sites all the way into Oregon. The good news on the San Joaquin and Klamath salmon returns provides a lifeline of hope for the future of the embattled commercial salmon fishery, which has been closed down repeatedly in recent years, and shows how quickly nature can rebound when barriers to restoration are removed. 

#4 FOR’s River Engagement Program Revived and Growing 

One of FOR’s signature strengths over the years has been connecting Californians to the joys of free flowing, living rivers through our river program, which encompasses both river rafting trips and immersive guide and activist training to build skills, partnerships, and long-term commitment to advocating for California’s rivers.

This critical effort contracted in size and scope during the COVID years – but the good news is that it’s finally bouncing back in 2025! This past year FOR hired new river program staff and inspired and engaged with hundreds of participants from around the state in our river trips, guide trainings, and activist education sessions. A new generation of river activists is coming to your river soon – learn how you can join them… 

 #5 More Deadbeat Dams fall by the way 

Friends of the River has been making the case for many years that new dams are not only environmentally destructive but a bad economic investment. In 2025 it turned out that proponents and potential investors in two proposed new projects agreed with us about the costs – and pulled the plug.

First to fall at the start of the year was the proposal to expand Los Vaqueros Reservoir in the East Bay, which collapsed when Contra Costa Water District failed to find any Bay Area partners for the project – they all balked at the potential price tag, which ballooned from under a billion dollars to about $1.6 billion.

Then this summer came the decision by the Santa Clara Valley Water District to drop the proposed Pacheco Dam project, whose costs rose threefold to an estimated $2.5 billion or more (and would have inundated part of an existing state park, among many other downsides). Not surprisingly, they had the same problem with attracting partners.

Now let’s hope potential investors in the Delta Tunnel and Sites Reservoir start looking more closely at the numbers…