Wednesday April 2, 2025
Valley Ag Voice —
The State Water Project provides water to 29 public water agencies, serving 27 million Californians and 750,000 acres of farmland. Following recent storms in February, the California Department of Water Resources announced a slight increase in the 2025 allocation forecast.
In a news release, DWR Director Karla Nemeth explained that California is experiencing a dry winter broken up by “very wet, short storm events.” In those conditions, DWR must move as much water when it is available “as safely as possible.”
“Ultimately, it will require new infrastructure to move and store enough water for California as dry spells last longer and wet periods become shorter and flashier,” Nemeth said.
Currently, the SWP allocation for 2025 is 35% of the requested water supplies, up from 20% in January.
Additionally, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation announced in February that the allocation provided to California farmers on the west side of the Central Valley, south of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Bay-Delta, is more than twice what the initial allocation was in 2024, a year with similar hydrology.