SACRAMENTO, California — California state water managers are likely to be able to increase how much water they pump out of the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta under a new set of environmental rules approved Thursday, which align the state more closely with federal water managers.
What happened: The California Department of Fish and Wildlife on Thursday largely approved the Department of Water Resources’ request to loosen the operating rules of the State Water Project, the system of pumps and canals that moves water from the sensitive Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta to cities and farms.
The new rules give state water managers greater leeway to pump more water out of the Delta, particularly during the winter and spring, when young Delta smelt can get caught up in and die at the pumps.
But the Department of Fish and Wildlife included some guardrails, requiring State Water Project operators to get approval from the director of the Department of Fish and Wildlife to diverge from existing pumping limits. Permission to do so will depend on real-time assessments of the impacts on endangered species of fish.
