Dam(n) the Hydrology, Full Speed Ahead!

Update Oct 3, 2025: Governor Gavin Newsom signed SB-72 on October 1. He did so with a signing statement, embracing the bill’s 9-million-acre-feet new water-supply/conservation/storage target saying, “I am signing Senate Bill 72, which directs the Department of Water Resources (DWR) to modernize the California Water Plan and develop a water supply target to be achieved in 2050 and beyond.” He further said, “This is a welcome opportunity to ensure the next plan update…reflects statewide, regional, and local planning efforts that include critical infrastructure for California's future — including the Delta.”

No doubt he means advancing the proposed Delta tunnel.

It also means that DWR will now have responsibilities for creating five-year state water plans for projects and programs that will create challenges and opportunities for friends of California rivers for decades.

In the August River Advocate , I went into some detail on the background and problems associated with Senator Anna Caballero’s (D-Merced) SB-72 ,  a bill that provides some problematic direction for the state’s five-year water plans. Well, the Assembly just passed it, and it now lies on the Governor’s desk for his signature or veto. 

I summarized the problem in the following paragraph: 

In the process of recasting some of the goals and approaches of the upcoming Water Plans, includes this little target for the 2028 Plan: “the department [of water resources] shall include an interim planning target of 9,000,000 acre-feet of additional water, water conservation, or water storage capacity to be achieved by 2040.” And that’s just the interim target. No doubt larger targets may appear. (For context, state consumptive water use is around 40,000,000 acre-feet annually.)  

Past history isn’t encouraging. Such measures as the 2014 California Water Bond and Senator Feinstein’s “drought bill,” the Water Infrastructure Improvements for the Nation Act of 2016, have caused nothing but headaches for California and even western-states-wide river lovers. The Bond provided money, and the drought bill eased the way for new storage projects as well as money. Governor Newsom’s planning targets for four-million acre-feet of new storage capacity (albeit in the fine print conceding that it will not result in that much actual water) has not helped the rhetorical environment (the fine print isn’t picked up by politicians or even the press). 

If signed by the Governor, this bill is going to cause mega-headaches for friends of rivers. One can only hope that one or several of the Governor’s agencies or departments will recommend veto on the basis of their induced headaches and that the bill’s target is inconsistent with the Governor’s target. If they do, the governor should listen.