Re: Renegotiating the San Joaquin River Exchange Contract – an opportunity to support river restoration, protect the Bay-Delta, and make water deliveries more equitable

Dear U.S. Bureau of Reclamation Regional Director Conant,

Thank you for your October 14 letter requesting renegotiation of the San Joaquin River Exchange Contract. Critical changes to the contract, which has not been updated in any way since 1968, are long overdue to protect Reclamation’s investment in the restoration of the San Joaquin River and its fish and wildlife.

Reclamation has worked with water districts, conservationists, and fishing groups since 2006 to restore flows and salmon to the San Joaquin below Friant Dam, which dewatered the river and destroyed the state’s largest Chinook salmon run after it was constructed in the 1940s. But in 2022, for the fourth time in a decade, deliveries to the Exchange Contractors from Friant led to dewatering the river and reducing deliveries to other water districts. It is unacceptable that the terms of the Exchange Contract are used to prevent release of water from Friant to maintain fisheries in good condition. The adverse impacts to the restoration of the river are exacerbated by constraints on seepage from the river that limit river flows to instead benefit the Exchange Contractors.

The Exchange Contract is out of touch with current values and realities in other ways. The amount of water that Reclamation delivers under the contract – up to 875,623 acre-feet, more than the entire natural flow of the San Joaquin River in some years – is unsustainable, both because of the massive damage done to the San Francisco Bay estuary ecosystem by these extremely high levels of water diversion and in light of the increasing impacts of climate change on water supply availability.

But your October 14 letter created an opportunity to remedy these problems.

We urge you to:

· Conduct an open, transparent, public negotiation process, as you do when renegotiating other contracts.

· Modify the contract to ensure that adequate water is released from Friant to maintain continuous flow along all reaches of the river and maintain fish populations in good condition, as required by California Fish and Game Code section 5937 and consistent with other legal mandates.

· Reduce the overall amount of water diverted from the Delta to the Exchange Contractors, and impose more significant reductions in dry years – just as is required of other water users –  in order to protect the San Joaquin River, and fish wildlife, and water quality of the San Francisco Bay estuary.

· Eliminate seepage constraints, which restrict how much water can be released to restore the river and interfere with maintaining fish populations in good conditions, as required by state law.

Reclamation has an opportunity – and an obligation – to renegotiate the Exchange Contract to ensure that it protects and restores the San Joaquin River and its fish and wildlife, and establishes new, more realistic water delivery commitments that reflect California hydrology, account for environmental needs and requirements, and ensure more equitable treatment of all water users.

Please do not squander this opportunity.