A July 11, 2026 article in Valley Ag Voice reports that Adam Nickels, acting Regional Director for the California-Great Basin region of the Bureau of Reclamation, is on record as proposing to improve “water supply reliability” by “updating” Water Rights Decision 1641.
The article quotes Mr. Nickels as follows:
“We actually know today that D-1641 and the regulations that are locked into D-1641 that touch on our water rights and limit us from pumping; we know those aren’t working,” Nickels said. “We know those aren’t helping fish, but it is built into regulation.”
Countless public interest organizations have criticized D-1641 as inadequately protective of fish ever since its adoption, true enough. But the lines of criticism have generally been that D-1641 requires too little water for fish protection from Mr. Nickels’s Central Valley Project (CVP) and its state counterpart, the State Water Project (SWP).
Mr. Nickels’s area of focus has squarely shifted to increasing water deliveries, consistent with Executive Order 14181 (“Emergency Measures To Provide Water Resources in California and Improve Disaster Response in Certain Areas”). Issued on January 24, 2025, EO 14181 requires: “In particular, the Secretary of the Interior and the Secretary of Commerce shall immediately take actions to override existing activities that unduly burden efforts to maximize water deliveries.” It also requires: “The Bureau of Reclamation shall take all available measures to ensure that State agencies … do not interfere with the Bureau of Reclamation’s operation of the project to maximize water delivery.”
Meanwhile, Reclamation is still on record as supporting the Voluntary Agreement (VA, branded “Healthy Rivers and Landscapes”) as a displacement of the update of the Bay-Delta Water Quality Control Plan. The VA promises to increase outflow through the Bay-Delta estuary in Dry, Below Normal, and Above Normal water years, compared to existing conditions as controlled by D-1641.
So, there is a newish problem with the VA: the VA proposes to add flow onto existing flows, when the federal government is now under order to make those existing flows smaller.
Theoretically, one could at times increase CVP water exports from the Delta and increase flows through the Delta. But this would come by reducing the amount of water Reclamation is storing in CVP reservoirs.
And speak of the devil, Reclamation is currently doing just that at Shasta Reservoir. As Tom Cannon reported in the California Fisheries Blog, Reclamation had over 4 million acre-feet of water in storage at the end of April 2026. But as Tom Cannon reported on July 30, 2026, Reclamation now has less cold water in Shasta Reservoir at this date than it had in drought year 2022. In 2022, Reclamation ran out of cold water, and survival of salmon that were spawned in the Sacramento River was under 5%. All indications are that there will be a dismal rate of survival in the Sacramento River in 2026 as well.
There is an element of magical thinking to the current posture of Reclamation. When one maximizes water deliveries, water is going to be short somewhere else. But magical thinking is by no means unique to Reclamation or to the moment. The underlying premise of the VA, as well as of the proposed Delta Tunnel and of Sites Reservoir, is that Central Valley water users can divert more water from the Bay-Delta system, and, at the same time, Central Valley rivers can produce more fish.
There is also an element of fatalism in Reclamation’s posture that is a recurring phenomenon. The thinking roughly is that fish aren’t getting better, so one might as well use water for irrigation that has quantifiable benefit, rather than devote limited water to fish when the benefits of required flow to fish are harder to quantify. The answer to an inadequate solution for fish protection becomes reducing effort in order to save water for irrigation or, at the limiting case, making no effort for fish protection at all.
Finally, there is an element of promoting collective amnesia in proposing an “update” of D-1641, or at least of staging a sucker test to see if anyone is paying attention. The proponents of the Delta tunnel, Sites Reservoir, and other pending water right applications and petitions all swear up and down that they will not have unreasonable effects on fish in wildlife in part because they will comply with D-1641.
Notwithstanding many D-1641’s defects, probably the most protective aspect of D-1641 is its requirements for Delta salinity control. D-1641 makes the CVP and SWP jointly responsible for controlling Delta salinity. This is likely D-1641’s most extensive water cost to the projects. In each alternative for the update of the Bay-Delta Plan, the State Water Board has proposed to make D-1641 a foundation on which the alternative is built.
Talk of “updating” D-1641 in order to improve water supply puts the sights most clearly on Delta water quality. Salinity affects water quality for Delta communities and farms, as well as the location of low salinity zone habitat for longfin and Delta smelt. Flow to support salinity requirements affects the frequency and intensity of harmful algal blooms, the extent of noxious weeds clogging channels for boaters and anglers, and the migration of salmon through the Delta.
More broadly, talk of “updating” D-1641 should be a reminder for anyone seeking to protect aquatic resources in the Bay-Delta system. It is easy, but flawed, to assume the permanence of existing protections. They are part of a landscape that is under constant pressure, including pressure to change the rules and pressure to not enforce them.