Posted on April 20, 2026
DredgeWire: Libertarian leaning California think tank weighs in on important water issue, and how dredging could help
By Edward Ring
After a wet Christ –mas, the U.S. Drought Monitor declared the entire state of California drought-free on Jan. 6. But you can bet that by early summer, state and local officials will raise the alarm again—demanding draconian government action to combat a problem they attribute to climate change.
Torrential rains pummeled the Golden State during the winter holidays, inundating the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta with high water and flooding all the way from its headwaters in the High Sierra Mountains to the estuaries opening into the San Francisco Bay. In the final week of 2025, more than 1.3 million acre-feet poured into the bay—enough water to supply all the state’s water consumption other than farms for nearly two months. But California water officials captured less than 7% of the incoming flow because of onerous environmental restrictions. The rest flowed out to sea.
As the weather warms, these same officials will soon call for even stricter water rationing in cities. They’ll say that farming is unsustainable in the San Joaquin Valley, a region of incomparable fertility that produces more than half of California’s agricultural output.
There’s a solution that would safely permit Californians to harvest far more water from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, the largest estuary on the West Coast, a vast region where the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers converge to drain a watershed encompassing more than 75,000 square miles: a comprehensive dredging program. This could make millions of additional acre-feet of water available for all Californians.
Dredging was once common throughout the region. Beginning in the late 19th century, California farmers regularly used their own equipment to dredge the delta channels. In a practice that ought to inspire progressives, those farmers deepened the delta channels and spread over their surrounding farmland the rich silt they excavated or used it to reinforce the levees. It was voluntary and effective. But environmentalists essentially ended the practice in the 1970s. Today, abandoned barge cranes lie rusting and rotting in delta sloughs. It’s no accident that water, once plentiful in California, became rare.
The environmentalist arguments against dredging are at best debatable, if not easily refuted. One of the central claims is that dredging kills protected native salmon. Precisely the opposite is true: The bigger threat to the state’s salmon population is the presence of striped and largemouth bass, aggressive fish species that were introduced to California in the late 19th century. In the old days, thanks to dredging, salmon still had access to deep channels with the cooler waters that they prefer and bass avoid.
Without dredging, the delta’s waters are shallower and warmer. When environmentalists countered with expensive government salmon hatcheries, the bass adapted, hiding in the shallows surrounding the hatcheries, where they are treated to an endless buffet of salmon fingerlings. The bass have consumed so many fingerlings that state officials have resorted to the ridiculous extreme of transporting baby salmon in tanker trucks, from upstream hatcheries to downstream locations closer to the San Francisco Bay.
Dredging would save the salmon, but humans would benefit even more. Without dredging, water officials who see storms coming quickly drain their reservoirs to make room for water. Dredging allows more water to flow through the delta without flooding, so water officials can keep reservoirs full—brimming with water they can release later in the year, even in the driest summer months. Channels deepened through regular dredging would greatly increase the overall volume of fresh water in the delta. Even during periods of low flow, pumps at the southern end of the delta that feed the aqueducts could operate longer.
Compared with other projects to increase California’s supply of freshwater, dredging is a bargain. The Great Valley Farm Partnership, a coalition of Central Valley farmers and water agencies, has identified 75 miles of channels, mostly in the southern delta, as priority areas for dredging. The estimated cost, on average $10 million a mile, puts the total price for this project well under $1 billion. That’s small change compared with most major California water projects.
Other dredging programs could also dramatically increase California’s water supply. The Army Corps of Engineers has identified silted-up chokepoints throughout the greater delta and its tributaries. Removing silt from these spots would increase the overall flow rate through the delta, allowing even more water retention in reservoirs. The state’s aging reservoirs also need dredging. A comprehensive program could eventually increase their storage capacity by more than 2 million acre-feet, enough water to supply all of California’s urban water users for nearly three months.
If California’s punitive morass of regulatory and litigious constraints on dredging were reformed, new technologies could make dredging more cost-effective than ever. Much of it could be privately financed by the farmers who operate on properties that border the channels, as they did for nearly a century. Drought lectures could finally be a thing of the past.
Mr. Ring is director of water and energy policy for the California Policy Center.
