FOR Response to State’s Voluntary Agreements Announcement on March 29, 2022
Today, the California Natural Resources Agency published a press release stating water and state agencies had signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) in ‘a Key Step in Years-Long Effort to Help Recover Salmon While Protecting Water Reliability.’ Friends of the River would like to initially respond for our members, and the general public.
This is an agreement to ‘intend to reach an agreement.’ The MOU does not guarantee that there will actually be an agreement, and it is premature to praise the state and water agencies for taking actions that have not yet been defined or agreed to.
We agree with Secretary Crowfoot that there is much ‘work to be done’, urgent work that is required in response to the crisis the state is facing with water management. It is completely within the power of the Natural Resources Agency and the State Water Resources Control Board (Water Board) to begin and accomplish that work – by completing the Bay Delta Water Quality Control Plan update as required by state and federal law.
It is also important to note that environmental and environmental justice groups have not been included in the negotiations that resulted in this MOU and are noticeably absent from both the press release and accompanying photograph. The result of these continued negotiations, as has so often happened in the past, may not comply with legal standards to protect clean water. It is up to the Water Board to decide, and to some degree, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Meanwhile, the San Francisco Bay Delta and California rivers will continue to wait and suffer due to continual delays to enforce critical environmental protections.