On the first day of the State Water Resources Control Board’s two-day meeting to adopt the Sacramento/Delta update to the Bay-Delta Water Quality Control Plan, an MWD executive presented a slide deck of last-minute edits that would strip protections that apply to Central Valley Project and State Water Project operations.
Jon Rubin, Metropolitan’s Board Executive Officer and Executive Advisor for Water Resources and Capital Improvements, presented the edits on October 28 on behalf of a group identified only as the “Public Water Agencies.” Until September 2023, Mr. Rubin was general counsel and assistant general manager of Westlands Water District. In an October 22 letter, Westlands had alleged that “water rights conditions such as carryover storage, temperature plans, and curtailments” exceed the Board’s authority.
Rubin proposed to:
Delete the Plan’s carryover storage provisions for cold water pool management, including the tables that identify ranges of storage targets for reservoirs. In 2014, Shasta Reservoir ran out of cold water in September and 95 percent of the wild winter-run Chinook year class was lost.
Remove the requirement that Delta outflow lost to changes in Central Valley Project operations be replaced with additional flows. Under Rubin’s proposed language, “Reduced Delta outflow alone shall not require replacement water or other mitigative action.” The Plan’s flow commitments were peer reviewed on the assumption that they are added to a protected base. One reviewer found the increments are only one to five percent above baseline.
Strike the Board’s commitment to implement the interior Delta flow objectives, the export limits and Delta Cross Channel gate closures, through the two projects’ water rights, and to address inconsistent operation of the two projects’ export pumps. Board staff relied on that very language in their October responses to comments.
The edits were drawn on change sheets that Board staff circulated on October 16 and October 27, after written comments closed on September 18, and were shown for the first time at the meeting. The Board’s own responses to comments state that recirculation of the environmental document is required when “changes in the project” are added after public notice.
California Water Research has sent a letter to the Board objecting to the gutting of the implementation of the Board’s narrative objectives.
The letter asks the Board not to adopt any of the last minute edits proposed by water agencies. “Due process and the Board’s regulations require that the Board continue the item, analyze the full text, and recirculate it for public comment as the Board did in December 2025,” Des Jardins said.
The Sierra Club’s attorney, Bob Wright, also sent a letter objecting that the proposed project “has become so uncertain that there is not the accurate, stable and finite project description required by CEQA.”
The Sierra Club et al. letter stated that as of October 27 the Board had received about 16 uninvited comment letters, beginning October 22. Change Sheet #2, circulated October 27, states that its revisions were made “in response to comments received after release of the Board meeting agenda on October 16, 2026.”
Westlands’ October 22 letter states that “neither Westlands nor any other party to the 2022 MOU has made a formal commitment to the VA Pathway.” The October 22 letter of the San Luis & Delta-Mendota Water Authority and six other exporters states that “no water right holder has yet agreed to be bound by the VA Pathway.”
The State Water Contractors, in their October 22 letter, objected to “the changes to sections 4.4.4 and 4.4.9.1” as examples of “Improper Layering of Regulatory Obligations,” and asked to be able to exit the HRL program without Board approval and not to be responsible for deficits in water purchase obligations.
The Sierra Club letter concluded that “The VA pathway now appears to have collapsed” and called for a revised Staff Report and recirculation for public comment. The letter was joined by the California Water Impact Network, the Planning and Conservation League, AquAlliance and the Center for Biological Diversity.
Westlands letter also argued that the changes made after August “created substantive changes requiring recirculation of the Staff Report.”
