POLITICS: Newsom’s water plan is about his 2028 campaign

Gavin Newsom launched a new water policy this week that does almost nothing for water. Perhaps he thinks it will help his nascent presidential campaign.

Newsom’s biggest weakness as a presidential candidate is his record. He cannot point to any major achievements after two terms.

That’s the real drought his plan aims to address.

Newsom called his policy the “most ambitious water plan in California history.” If so, the obvious question is why he waited until the last months of his administration to launch it.

And the equally obvious answer is that he is focused on the 2028 presidential campaign, not on solving California’s chronic water problems.

His policy is even called “California Water Plan 2028.” Why 2028, two years after he leaves office? The question answers itself.

Of course, nothing that ambitious can be done in two years in California. Even massive water bonds take forever to spend.

It has taken all eight years of Newsom’s governorship for him to line up the approvals for the Sites Reservoir, the first major water storage project in half a century. 

A closer look at Newsom’s plan reveals that it does not actually propose any new water projects beyond Sites.

The plan is focused on “improving data,” “setting measurable water targets,” and creating “a more coordinated, transparent planning framework,” whatever that means.

Newsom has also set a goal for water supply: 9 million acre-feet by 2040. That is still less than 5% of the water California receives annually from rain and snow. But it would roughly double the capacity of the California State Water Project.

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Or, as the governor’s office says, 9 million acre-feet is “[r]oughly equal to two Shasta Reservoirs.”

Absent from the plan is any explicit support for raising the height of the Shasta Dam itself, something President Donald Trump proposed in his first term.

Trump told The California Post in an Oval Office interview in January that he still supported the idea of raising the dam — a federal project.

But for Newsom, supporting Trump’s idea openly would be politically fraught — and he would face opposition from environmentalists and Native American groups. 

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Not a good way to go into a presidential primary.

So the “California Water Plan 2028” is little more than a talking point. 

This has been Newsom’s pattern on water projects. All talk, no action.

He backs the Delta Tunnel project — but it is no further along than it was when Jerry Brown left office eight years ago.

He supports desalination plants — but the pace of expansion is laughably slow, and faces energy constraints as California aims at “net zero” by 2045.

The only way that the “California Water Plan 2028” might achieve 9 million acre-feet of supply is through conservation — which means that Californians could be facing less, not more, water available for use.

So by 2028, Newsom will be able to tell voters in South Carolina about his wonderful plan.

But it will be as empty as the Palisades reservoir on the day of the fire.