Bill if Passed Would Fast-Track Delta Tunnel and Eliminate Deadlines to Use Water
On May 14, 2025, the Newsom Administration proposed two “trailer bills” in the State Legislature that would create special rules for the California Department of Water Resources (DWR) and its State Water Project (SWP), eliminating requirements that all other water right holders must fulfill.
The bills would fast-track the administration’s proposed tunnel under the Delta (“Delta Conveyance Project”) that would increase diversions of Sacramento River water to the San Joaquin Valley and southern California by 19%.
Specifically, the bills would fast-track litigation relating to the tunnel, misapplying laws first passed whose purpose was to reduce “green tape” for environmentally “beneficial” projects.
The bills would allow the State to sell bonds for its proposed tunnel even when courts have found the sale of such bonds premature and unlawful.
The bills would give DWR unique authority to enter private land and conduct technical studies in relation to its existing or proposed water projects, including the Delta tunnel.
The bills would also eliminate the time limit for the State Water Project to use all the water it was allocated in 1972; all other water rights “permits” have a deadline to use allocated water. DWR was supposed to have used its allocated water by 2009.
The bills would also exempt the update of flow requirements to San Francisco Bay (“Bay-Delta Plan”) from environmental review under the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA).
And the bills would add new gatekeepers on water rights protests to make it harder for public interest groups and other water right holders to use due process to oppose or improve new water rights or changes to existing water rights.
The proposed legislation seeks to undo several legal defeats for the Newsom administration. In the last few years, courts and regulators denied the State the right to sell bonds for the tunnel and denied DWR access to private lands to drill test holes relating to the tunnel.
The proposed legislation is a sinister escalation of the administration’s tendency to promote its divert-baby-divert water policies as an absolute truth. The group-think goes like this: if we can’t get our way playing by the rules, then the rules must be wrong. So get rid of the rules and make special rules for our agencies and their projects.
This is how bad law is made.
The exemption of the Bay-Delta Plan from CEQA is particularly insidious. It shows how the Newsom administration’s start with seemingly positive efforts to “cut green tape” and to accelerate restoration projects (like river channel enhancements) became a structure for fast-tracking a water development agenda. The CEQA provision for the Bay-Delta Plan goes one step further: it says that any improvement, even a tiny improvement where a huge improvement is needed, exempts the Bay-Delta Plan from environmental review.
CSPA will join many NGO and tribal colleagues, and many water rights holders who are held to a higher standard, in opposing these bills.