Dear Governor Newsom:

I urge you to let the State Water Resources Control Board do their job to set new and stronger science-based flow and temperature protections for Central Valley salmon, and to abandon salmon killing projects like the Delta Tunnel, Sites Reservoir and the Voluntary Agreements.

Salmon, fishing families, Tribes, and coastal and river towns are in a painful struggle for survival because of the state’s water policies. The salmon fishery has been closed since 2023. In dry years, your agencies have slashed environmental protections, exposing native fish populations to extreme harm and leaving flows in some rivers so low that toxic algal blooms make the water unfit for drinking or swimming – greatly affecting frontline communities. In wet years, you have encouraged state agencies to waive environmental protections, preventing fish, wildlife, and water quality from recovering.  

The cause of the crisis is clear, and so is the solution. Too much of the fresh cold water that once flowed from rivers in the Sierra Nevada to the Delta and Bay has been diverted. In an average year, more than half of the Bay’s inflow is diverted—and about 80% of that goes to industrial agriculture. Proposed solutions include infrastructure projects, such as the Delta Tunnel and Sites Reservoir, funded by billions of taxpayer dollars that will massively increase water diversions. This unsustainable demand leaves too little water in our rivers to support spawning and migrating salmon, and too little cold water behind reservoirs…we are killing baby salmon before they even hatch.

California’s Bay-Delta needs a plan that’s based on science rather than the demands of powerful water districts. For years, you have tried to negotiate a compromise with the state’s largest agricultural water districts – negotiations that excluded input from commercial and recreational fishermen and women, environmental organizations, environmental justice communities, and Tribes. The resulting proposals – termed “voluntary agreements” – defy science and deny the need to reduce the state’s unsustainable water demands.  

The State Water Board’s Bay-Delta Plan is intended to prevent the kind of ecosystem collapse we are now witnessing. The Board has been trying to update standards in this plan for over a decade – but you have blocked these efforts in favor of voluntary settlements with big water districts. Science-based updates would set aside more water to maintain our rivers and fish and force cities and industrial agricultural operators to use water more efficiently.  

The State Water Board can avert a further crisis in the Bay-Delta—in fact, it is legally required to do so. Please stop blocking the State Water Board’s update of environmental safeguards and, instead, encourage the Water Board to complete a science-based update of the Bay-Delta Plan quickly and then immediately implement the strong protections our Bay-Delta and fisheries desperately need.  

It’s time to be on the right side of history and prevent the extinction of salmon and the jobs, people, businesses and communities this fishery and our rivers support.  

Sincerely,