A step in the right direction but fails to protect rural farming communities

January 6, 2020 

The Newsom Administration’s highly anticipated Water Resilience Portfolio presents an impressive suite of actions that will certainly advance California water management. The Natural Resources Agency, CalEPA, and California Department of Food & Agriculture’s plan offers new opportunities to improve the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta ecosystem by enhancing monitoring and incorporation of adaptive management based on the best available science, enhancing conveyance and storage, and addressing the impacts of climate change.

“The Coalition for a Sustainable Delta remains concerned, however, that the portfolio fails to address the growing impacts of water scarcity on rural farming communities throughout the Central Valley of California. While the portfolio recognizes land fallowing resulting from implementation of the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act and increasingly limited surface water supplies, it stops short of providing real solutions to address the impacts to residents, farms and small businesses that depend on reliable water supplies,” said Bill Phillimore, Coalition for a Sustainable Delta President. “The state needs to provide more concrete solutions to a problem that will have far reaching impacts on millions who live and work in these regions.”