July 31, 2018 — California’s Economy is thriving and its population is growing. San Francisco County alone added more than 120,000 jobs in five years – a huge leap in economic productivity that owes itself largely to the lucrative worlds of finance, technology and biotechnology. As people from around the country and the world continue clamoring to find their place in one of the most expensive and most congested cities, an important question is emerging in public discussions: Does California have enough water to go around, or will natural resources be sacrificed for economic success?

“That’s a question of carrying capacity and social values,” said Peter Drekmeier, policy director of the environmental organization Tuolumne River Trust, which lobbies to protect the main waterway from which San Francisco receives its water.

Drekmeier is one of many who believe that California can grow as an economic powerhouse while maintaining productive aquatic ecosystems resembling their natural and unimpacted character – if, that is, water is divided fairly and consumed efficiently. Others, however, feel that the state’s economy – including agriculture but also urban elements – will need more water in the future, even if this drives some fish species extinct.

These differing perspectives are at the heart of a current policy battle in California as the State Water Resources Control Board works to finalize a plan that will determine how much water should be left in critical rivers feeding the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. It’s a decision that will impact not just fish and farms, but urban areas like the San Francisco Bay Area where strongly held environmental values may be challenged by economic aspirations.

Trouble for Fish

The Tuolumne River is a major tributary of the San Joaquin River, which feeds into the Bay-Delta, the linchpin for California’s statewide water delivery system. It’s also the place from which the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission draws the majority of its water to serve 2.7 million people in San Francisco, Alameda, San Mateo and Santa Clara counties.

As recently as the 1940s, more than 100,000 fall-run Chinook salmon spawned annually in the Tuolumne. In 2015, a little more than 100 of the fish swam up the river. Today, the river, studded with several dams and heavily diverted for human use, is considered by many to be in critical condition, and scientists and river advocates say what the Tuolumne and its native fishes need more than anything else is increased flows of water.

“Water is just one component of habitat, but it’s a very important one,” said Rene Henery, a biologist with the conservation group Trout Unlimited.

State agencies agree, and early in July the State Water Resources Control Board released its final draft of a plan to increase the amount of water left in the Tuolumne and two other San Joaquin River tributaries to about 40 percent of their historic, or “unimpaired,” winter and springtime flows. This Bay-Delta Plan Update was announced on July 6 and would allow for flows as low as 30 percent and as high as 50 percent between February and June, a key period for juvenile salmon migrating toward the ocean.

“While multiple factors are to blame for the decline [in the Central Valley’s Chinook salmon runs], the magnitude of diversions out of the Sacramento, San Joaquin and other rivers feeding into the Bay-Delta is a major factor in the ecosystem decline,” the board said in a statement.

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