The bills may already be dropping. The legislature may already be meeting. The posturing may already be in full swing. But other than a couple of very quick updates, we don’t anticipate having anything of substance to report before the calendar turns to 2025. And the real reporting won’t likely begin until the new national administration takes the oath of office January 20 and the California legislature drops all its 2025 bills by the mid-February deadline.
But there’s a little end-of-year reporting, nonetheless. It wouldn’t be California if there weren’t.
As anticipated and as Governor Newsom lobbied intensively, the Southern California Metropolitan Water District (MWD) agreed to fund the next three years of the planning and permitting necessary to move forward with the Delta Conveyance Project. The $20 billion proposal would route more water to Southern California through a single 45-mile-long tunnel under the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta in an effort to ensure reliability of the conveyance that feeds water to Southern California through the State Water Project. Metropolitan’s share of the costs is just under half of the total required from all the participating agencies. Without MWD’s participation, there is no project.
Last week’s meeting in Las Vegas among the seven (7) states of the Colorado Compact produced no progress whatsoever. Remember, the seven states, which break into two categories with different interests (Upper Basin & Lower Basin), have to come to some kind of consensus about how to move forward after 2026, lest the federal government decide the matter unilaterally – a matter that has to be decided given that the Colorado River produces far less water annually than has long been allocated among them by the original Colorado Compact as amended multiple times since it was first adopted in 1922. Talks will reconvene in early 2025. How they might be affected by a new and very different administration in Washington is anybody’s guess, but smart money would be on a continuation of the current administration’s laissez faire approach. There are “blue” states, “purple” states, and “red” states among the seven, which though they have a common interest in finding the common ground required to craft a consensus, there is no guarantee that they will. Stay tuned.
Also to be filed under that new chapter we’re writing about the increasing relevance of federal actions for the California golf community, we are tracking a proposal by the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service to declare the Monarch butterfly an “endangered species.” If approved, the Monarch butterfly would become one of the most widespread species ever protected under the Federal Endangered Species Act. The Fish and Wildlife Service will be taking feedback on its proposal until March 12 and plans to finalize its decision by the end of 2025, by which time the Trump Administration will be in full flower with consequences for the survival of any such declaration unknown. Trump 45’s administration was known for watering down these sorts of things, which could presage a level of “endangered protection” that would allow a listing status compatible with certain limited application protocols that the golf community could work with.
A recent Clean Water Act (CWA) case now before the U.S. Supreme Court we reported on briefly earlier this year [City and County of San Francisco v. EPA] has the potential to impact policy around CWA enforcement and could be significant for water quality regulation in California and the rest of the country. The case challenges the ability of EPA and states with delegated CWA programs to impose vague narrative standards as opposed to specific numeric limits in discharge permits issued for sewer overflows. When the decision comes down, we will report what it portends, or doesn’t portend, in terms of permits held by California’s golf courses.
For a “Team” that preaches the virtual irrelevance of federal issues and actions on California’s golf courses, we just closed out 2024 with a trifecta of issues very much relevant to the California golf community. Perhaps, we should reconsider.
We’ll be back in your inboxes in early 2025.
HAPPY HOLIDAYS!
- SCGA Public Affairs Team
