Do your job, Gov. Newsom — end water wars for state and Stanislaus fish and farmers

Don’t be fooled. Governor Gavin Newsom’s decision Monday to declare drought in most of California, including here, is no reason for most farmers in Stanislaus County to break out the party hats.

They know full well that words on a declaration will not generate an extra drop of water for their orchards and row crops.

They also know that a drought declaration could take some power over the water we do have from our locally elected irrigation leaders — who represent institutions guiding us through periodic droughts for more than 100 years — and hand it to nonelected Sacramento bureaucrats.

That’s a precarious situation to be in.

And it’s why Stanislaus leaders stood alone in the San Joaquin Valley by declining to jump on the bandwagon when everyone else shrilly demanded, in the past couple of weeks or so, a statewide drought declaration.

What we most need is for Newsom to summon the courage to implement voluntary agreements negotiated more than two years ago with federal agencies and our irrigation boards, whose patience so far has been rewarded with little more than supreme frustration.

The governor’s predecessor, former Gov. Jerry Brown, essentially handed Newsom on a silver platter a template for resolving the water wars that have plagued this area and others throughout the state.

The Tuolumne River Voluntary Agreement, as proposed, would sacrifice some farm water by sending it instead down the river to help fish. The flow increase would be significant, but not murderous to agriculture, the backbone of our economy.

In addition, $83 million would be spent upgrading fish habitat along the Tuolumne. Who would pay? Those sharing the river and benefiting from its life-giving water: the Modesto and Turlock irrigation districts — most people reading this newspaper are their customers — and San Francisco, which relies on the Tuolumne for drinking water.

The voluntary agreement is based on the best available science, and represents an honest attempt to let both fish and people win. Brown knew it, our people know it and Newsom knows it.

But it didn’t get done.

CA water talks are “wicked complicated”

Under heavy pressure from the powerful environmental lobby, the State Water Boards caved entirely, while Newsom held out for a deal that would make them more happy. Negotiations have been in limbo since.

Opinion editors with McClatchy newspapers in California, including The Bees in Modesto, Sacramento and Fresno, recently met virtually with key senior members of Newsom’s staff. They did not argue with the suggestion that confronting drought would be less fraught if the water wars landscape were more stable. In other words, if voluntary agreement negotiations would conclude.

Karla Nemeth, state Water Resources director, noted how former Pres. Trump’s meddling last year — pushing a biological opinion favoring farmers and ignoring fish — “sent a bit of a chill into the discussions,” but she confirmed that talks resumed in earnest in January.

“It’s wicked complicated,” said Chuck Bonham, state Fish and Wildlife director, noting hundreds of moving parts and competing interests. Yet Newsom continues to express optimism in public press conferences, which “ought to send a signal to the people involved that now is the time to close it out, or the window may close,” Bonham said.

Joaquin Esquivel, State Water Boards chairman, said emerging data from water agencies beginning to comply with new groundwater law eventually will help with solutions.

The best and right solution is for Newsom to pick up the phone today and strongly tell Nemeth, Bonham and Esquivel that he expects the voluntary agreements to wrap up without delay.

He must use the unique influence granted him by the people of the state of California to move beyond the talking stage into one of action, for the benefit of our fish and our people.

This story was originally published May 12, 2021 at 4:00 AM.