In 2020, Bernhardt and Trump implemented an increase in water deliveries to big farmers under conditions that spelled disaster for the salmon fishery, among other ecological issues. California objected, asserting that Interior's official biological opinions, which concluded that the increases wouldn't adversely affect salmon and other species, bore no "rational connection (with) the facts." The Natural Resources Defense Council labeled the opinions "a plan for extinction" of salmon and other endangered species.

They went through anyway. The demands from agribusinesses in the Central Valley for more water had received a friendly hearing from the Trump administration and Republicans in Congress, who recognized that the valley was perhaps the only strongly Republican part of California. They decried the passage of water from inland reservoirs to rivers and out to sea as wasteful; as I wrote at the time, their single-minded service for the growers deprived the salmon fishery of its lifeblood.

The impact of the Trump policies was destined to be felt three years on. Indeed, last year only 6,160 adult salmon were estimated to have spawned in the Sacramento River, the worst level since the drought year of 2017 and obviously well below the annual average of 175,000 spawning from 1996 to 2005, the best period for the health of the salmon fishery over the last four decades.

In January, Newsom responded to the salmon crisis with an action plan encompassing restoring salmon habitats, modernizing hatcheries, and removing impediments to salmons' upstream migrations. The fishery community supports many of those initiatives, but also recognizes that the package is largely aspirational, for money hasn't been appropriated to fulfill all its elements.

The Newsom administration also outlined plans in March 2022 to reach a series of voluntary agreements with agricultural water users over water sharing. Environmental and fishing groups, which weren't part of the negotiations, weren't impressed — a coalition of those groups, including the Sierra Club and the Golden State Salmon Association, panned the proposal as "incomplete, unenforceable, inequitable, inadequate, and (lacking) a scientific foundation."

Nor were the proposed voluntary agreements favored by two key federal agencies. The Environmental Protection Agency wrote in January that the absence of strong mandates for higher water flows in the Sacramento River meant that the plan would have only a "insignificant impact" on water temperature in the river. The National Marine Fisheries Service questioned whether the $740 million in state and federal funding needed to implement the voluntary agreements was realistic, since none of it had been appropriated.

In other words, Newsom's approach involves a heaping helping of hand-waving. From the standpoint of the salmon industry, his other water policies, including a 45-mile water tunnel under the delta and fast-tracking construction of the Sites Reservoir in the western Sacramento Valley, will make things worse. The tunnel would turn the delta into "a deathtrap for salmon," Nelson says, and the Sites Reservoir would degrade downstream waters, possibly increasing temperatures.

In many respects, the policies on the table are antiques. Some were developed without regard for the effects of global warming, and others reflect thinking that emerged in an era when California authorities thought the water supply was abundant, even unlimited.

That won't do anymore. The federal government already lists Sacramento River winter-run Chinook salmon as an endangered species and the spring run as a threatened species. The all-important fall run might not be far behind.

California's water policies need to be subjected to a thorough rethinking, and money to fix all that's broken needs to be appropriated, not just put on somebody's wish list.

Fishermen and -women are a constitutionally optimistic class. "There's always hope that things will get better," Artis told me. But hope is waning. "We have to educate the Legislature and the public so we get those water flow and temperature protections, or we'll be here again year after year with fishery closures."

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