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Governor Gavin Newsom praises Trump for release of $315 million for Sites and San Luis reservoirs [1]
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Date: 2025-02-26
As a coalition of Tribes, fishing groups and environmental organization fights to stop the construction of Sites Reservoir, Governor Gavin Newsom on Tuesday celebrated the release of funding by the Trump Administration for the release of $315.5 million of obligated money for the state’s controversial Sites Reservoir Project and the existing San Luis Reservoir.
$200 million is designated for Sites Reservoir, while the rest is designated for the expansion of San Luis Reservoir. The funding was awarded during the Biden administration and released by President Trump on Tuesday.
“We are grateful for this shared priority with the Trump Administration as we move forward together to build critical infrastructure to improve water storage,” Newsom gushed in a statement.
Sites Reservoir is a proposed offstream reservoir project west of Colusa in the Sacramento Valley of Northern California.
Newsom claims Sites Reservoir will “capture water during wet seasons and store it for use during drier seasons – holding up to 1.5 million acre-feet of water. “
It has received a total of $46.75 million in early funding from the state. In all, Sites is eligible for $875.4 million of Proposition 1 funding. The total project cost is estimated at $4 billion.
Governor Newsom streamlined the project late last year, defeating a CEQA legal challenge and preserving that victory on appeal.
Republican Congressman Doug LaMalfa also praised the Trump Administration’s allocation of $315.5 million in funding for California water storage projects, including $200 million designated for the Sites Reservoir project.
“This funding is great news for Sites Reservoir and for California’s water future,” said LaMalfa, echoing Governor Newsom in a statement. “This project is not just a plan, it’s a vital solution to address our state’s ongoing water struggles.”
The funding for Sites and San Luis follows Newson’s pledge to work with the Trump administration to build Sites Reservoir at a press conference in Colusa County in December, as well as at a meeting with Trump in Washington D.C. on Feb. 5.
“And we’re gonna get Sites done and we’re gonna continue to advocate for federal resources,” the Governor stated at the press conference. “Donald Trump, this is your kind of project (chuckles). We’re gonna continue to advocate for local water agencies to enthusiastically embrace this.”
In response to Newsom’s relentless advocacy for Sites, Save California Salmon and other critics of the project note that Sacramento River water is already over-allocated by five times its availability and that the reservoir will add to climate change emissions.
Critics also say the tribal impacts, water supply quality, and environmental harms would be “devastating,” especially as Central Valley salmon and Delta fish populations move closer and closer to extinction.
“Our governor has decided to sideline our most important public processes in order to build a 1.5 million-acre-foot reservoir on lands that are sacred to California Native American tribes,” said Regina Chichizola of Save California Salmon. “All Californians should be concerned about privatization of our public water resources. It is obvious the interests of water brokers, big ag, and Southern California water districts mean more to the governor than justice for Native American tribes and California’s most important public resource, clean water.”
Chichizola added that tribes recently testified about addressing significant concerns that pertain to the reservoir’s footprint. They highlighted the “lack of meaningful tribal consultation on the project” and advised that the reservoir would flood tribal cultural resources, Native American graves and sacred sites, and further degrade water quality and salmon runs, harming an important Indigenous food source and traditional lifeway systems.
They also testified that the reservoir “threatens tribal water and fishing rights and would build new diversion pumps to take fresh water from the Sacramento River and release warm, polluted water into the Bay Delta.”
Sherri Norris from California Indian Environmental Alliance did not mince words about what had happened.
“It is offensive that the state so poorly consulted with tribes and then congratulated tribes for stomaching the state’s neglect and continued abuse of their requirements under the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA),” Norris pointed out. “Tribes are still in need of Consultation and this project remains in violation of CEQA regardless of how the agencies want to spin it.”
In addition to that testimony, scientists testified that Sites Reservoir threatened to release toxic algae, warm water and mercury into the state’s water supply, according to Chichizola. These experts warned discharges of polluted water have the potential to adversely impact downstream tribal lands and water quality, along with the drinking water for over 25 million Californians and the health of local ecosystems.
“Tribes and other project opponents have valid concerns including contamination of drinking water supplies, salmon extinction, and inundation of lands that hold irreplaceable Native American sacred sites and cultural resources,” concluded Kasil Willie, Staff Attorney for Save California Salmon. “The project, as proposed, will cause irreparable harm to tribal cultural resources, including ancestral village sites and burial sites.”
The release of $315.5 millions for Sites and San Luis reservoirs couldn’t come at a worse time for the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta. Zero Delta smelt, an indicator species that has been villainized by Donald Trump and his corporate agribusiness allies, have been caught in the CDFW’s Fall Midwater Trawl Survey in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta for the seventh year in a row: nrm.dfg.ca.gov/...
Meanwhile, salmon fishing on California’s ocean and river waters has been closed for the past two years and may be closed again this year, due to the collapse of Sacramento River and Klamath River fall-run Chinook salmon populations. Likewise, Sacramento River winter-run and spring-run Chinook salmon are moving closer and closer to extinction, due to massive water exports from the Delta and other factors, including invasive species, toxics and water pollution.
Conservationists and scientists say Sites Reservoir and the Governor’s Delta Tunnel, by diverting more water from the Sacramento River before it flows through the Delta, will only further exacerbate the critical situation that Delta fish species and Central Valley salmon populations are now in.
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