Governor Newsom: Turn Up the Delta Pumps!

When it comes to the water supply in California for cities and farms, nothing matters more than how we manage the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. As of 2/09 we were 132 days into the 2025-26 rainfall season which began on 10/01/2025. That’s enough time to get an idea of how delta management is shaping up this year.

During the last four months, 1.5 million acre feet (MAF) were pumped out of the Delta and into California’s major southbound aqueducts, while another 7.1 MAF flowed into the San Francisco Bay. Aqueduct withdrawals equaled 18 percent of the available water. Of this, the state-owned pumps that supply the California Aqueduct moved 796,000 acre feet which is 30 percent of their pumping capacity. The federally-owned pumps withdrew an additional 738,000 acre feet, which is 66 percent of their capacity.

When deciding how much water to pump during high winter flows, the governing concern is how additional pumping may affect the Delta’s environment. There’s a lot at stake.

Over the 132 days through 2/07, if the much larger state pumps (capacity 20,430 acre feet per day) had just operated as often as the federal pumps did (capacity, 8,500 acre feet per day), that is, if they had operated at 66 percent of capacity instead of at just 30 percent of capacity, an additional 977,000 acre feet could have been sent down the California Aqueduct so far this season.

From an environmentalist perspective, if both the state and federal delta pumps had run at 66 percent of their capacity, 6.1 MAF would have still flowed into the bay, and we would have already sent 2.5 MAF south to be stored in reservoirs or percolated into aquifers that are desperately in need of replenishment. Instead, only 1.5 MAF went south. That’s not enough, particularly if the state pumps continue to be ran at one-third of their capacity.

On February 9 Governor Newsom received a letter from four members of California’s congressional delegation. Two Democrats (Jim Costa, Adam Gray) and two Republicans (David Valadao, Vince Fong) collaborated to ask the governor to suspend regulations passed by the State Water Resources Control Board in 1999. The regulations constrain aqueduct pumping during the entire month of February and potentially into March, two of the wettest months of the year. In their letter, these congressmen claim that the benefits of lowering water withdrawals every February do not take into account evolving scientific understanding of the delta environment, nor do these outdated regulations take into account changing environmental conditions in the delta.

This year, not for the first time, the damage to California’s farm economy and to the water security of its coastal megacities caused by inadequate winter delta diversions is compounded by the simultaneous decision to empty the state’s major reservoirs. The logic of the request these four congressmen are making to Newsom is straightforward. If we’re going to drain our storage reservoirs into the delta, then let us pump that water into the aqueducts. If we’re going to restrict delta pumping, then let us leave water in the reservoirs so we can recover it later in the year for irrigation.

This is a perfect storm of malmanagement, engineered by bureaucrats who can’t agree on a new delta management plan that accounts for modern science and modified delta ecosystems, and so instead adheres to an obsolete strategy that harms farmers without helping fish.

Governor Newsom has an opportunity to recognize the consequences of the state continuing to restrict delta pumping at the same time as it empties storage reservoirs. He can order the California Department of Water Resources to increase delta pumping and reduce reservoir releases. He can recognize that years of failure to update outdated regulations has brought California’s farm economy to the brink.

California’s farmers have become some of the most efficient users of water in the world. But over 20 years of needlessly harsh reductions in allocations of surface water from the State Water Project has led to depleted groundwater, fallowed farmland, business failures and unemployment. The dust whipped up from inactive farmland has led to increased cases of Valley Fever. One of the richest agricultural regions in the world is being needlessly destroyed.

It is difficult to overstate the degree of desperation California’s farmers have reached. For their upcoming growing season they need more water than they’re going to get unless changes are made right now. Governor Newsom has the power fix this immediate crisis. He can then demand swift action to bring delta management practices into the 21st century.