State Water Board Plans Adoption on November 4
On October 5, 2026, CSPA joined allied environmental organizations, fishing organizations, a Tribe, and Tribal advocates (“NGO Parties”) in comments on the Revised Draft Water Rights Permit and Revised Draft Water Rights Decision on the proposed Sites Reservoir. The State Water Board and its Administrative Hearing Office released the revised documents on September 3, 2026.
CSPA and allies oppose granting a water right for Sites. However, the State Water Board is likely to grant a permit. Therefore, the comments of NGO Parties largely focus on the flow requirements in the Revised Draft Permit.
The first (March) Draft Permit included a stand-alone requirement that 55% of the unimpaired flow must be passing into and through the Delta as a precondition to diversions to Sites Reservoir. Following political pressure and opposition from the Sites Authority and others over the summer, the Revised Draft Permit removed this requirement. Instead, Revised Draft Permit requires compliance with an updated Bay-Delta Plan, which, in its current (but not yet adopted) August Draft, includes a 55% of unimpaired flow requirement for “new water supply projects.”
The comments of NGO Parties strongly argue for reinstatement of a percent-of-unimpaired-flow requirement in the Sites water rights permit itself. The August Draft Bay-Delta Plan already lays out a process to convert new water supply projects to enroll them in the Voluntary Agreements. It is abundantly clear that the Sites Project Authority already has one foot out of the 55% requirement. It will seek status as a Voluntary Agreement party status immediately.
The Bay-Delta Plan makes such a switch much easier than the process to change the terms of a water right. If allowed, parties to the Sites water rights hearing will have gone through three years of evidentiary process only to see the potential to change essential diversion criteria in an outside, non-evidentiary process.
The comments of NGO Parties describe the additional potential that reliance on an external document provides for confusion and gamesmanship.
The comments of NGO Parties also describe how Sites diversions are allowed to take away the “flow base” to which Voluntary Agreement parties propose to make flow “additions.” Many Sites Project participants are also Voluntary Agreement parties. Sites will allow them to take away with one hand the flow they propose to add to the Delta with the other. The comments request stricter rules in the absence of doing away altogether with the Voluntary Agreements.
Finally, the comments of NGO Parties contain extensive scientific justification for stronger diversion criteria based on conditions in the Sacramento River. The September Draft Permit reduced the required months in which stronger Sacramento River flow requirements applied in the March Draft Permit. The comments dispute both specific substantive issues and the conceptual basis of changes as outlined in the Revised Draft Decision.
The Revised Draft Permit and Revised Draft Decision for Sites both refer to and assume that the Board will have adopted the Bay-Delta Plan, more or less as written, at the end of October. This dependence on a not-yet-adopted Plan is clear evidence of a political rush to complete the Sites process before the current state administration leaves office.
NGO parties have formally requested that the State Water Board leave 60 days between the adopting hearing for the Bay-Delta Plan and an adoption hearing for the Sites water rights permit and decision.