SACRAMENTO, California — The Biden administration signed off on Friday on its plan for how to run the massive system of pumps, canals and reservoirs that moves water across California, just weeks before President-elect Donald Trump takes office with a very different vision.
The Bureau of Reclamation’s record of decision closes a four-year process to overturn Trump’s previous rules for the Central Valley Project, which both environmentalists and the state of California said did not adequately protect endangered fish like the Chinook salmon and Delta smelt and sued over.
The Central Valley Project, operated jointly with the California-run State Water Project, delivers water from the wetter part of Northern California to Central Valley farmers and Southern California through the sensitive habitat of the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta.
Its guidelines are a perpetual political football, and the Biden administration’s under-the-wire plan is likely to face at least some opposition from Trump, who vowed on the campaign trail to send more water to conservative-leaning Central Valley farmers.
