California
California dam raise would take more Delta water. Why are environmentalists silent? | Opinion
Fresno drivers headed to the Bay Area via Pacheco Pass on Highway 152 can’t help but take note of a sprawling inland sea that seemingly appears out of nowhere among the yellowed, oak-dotted foothills.
This is San Luis Reservoir, essentially a 2 million acre-foot holding tank built to irrigate San Joaquin Valley farms and supply drinking water to Silicon Valley. Its construction was considered such a significant addition to California’s water supply that President John F. Kennedy turned out in 1962 to push the dynamite plunger.
“It is a pleasure for me to come out here and help blow up this Valley,” Kennedy quipped from a temporary grandstand erected atop a nearby hill.
Six decades later, the 3½-mile long earth dam that towers above 152 and impounds the federally owned, state operated reservoir is getting fortified. Construction crews are 2½ years into a $1.1 billion seismic upgrade of B.F. Sisk Dam that won’t be completed until 2031.
Opinion
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Funded mainly by the 1978 Safety of Dams Act, the project will raise the 382-foot-tall dam by 10 feet and add additional safety features designed to ease concerns of widespread flooding if slumping were to occur during a major earthquake. (San Luis Reservoir lies within two fault zones and is situated uphill from the nearby communities of Los Banos and Santa Nella.)
So far, the 120 to 150 workers have focused on reinforcing and raising three different stability berms along the dam’s midsection where seepage had been occurring. Most of the material required, millions of cubic yards worth of boulders, riprap and gravel, is excavated from an on-site quarry and transported to the dam via a steady procession of dump trucks operating 12 hours a day.
Just by itself, the Sisk Dam safety modification project does not increase the reservoir’s capacity. To accomplish that, the Bureau of Reclamation and San Luis & Delta-Mendota Water Authority are teaming on a second 10-foot dam raise that would create an additional 130,000 acre feet of storage.
Enlarging the reservoir is projected to cost an additional $1 billion. But because the 10-foot storage raise would take place concurrently with the 10-foot seismic raise, work that isn’t scheduled to begin until 2027, the partners have time to assemble a funding plan. The next public negotiations are Aug. 22-23 in Monterey.
“We want to maximize the effort and minimize the expense,” said Henry Garcia, the Bureau of Reclamation’s construction manager.
Little scrutiny, zero opposition
The expansion of San Luis Reservoir is a small part of a larger effort by the state and federal agencies to increase water storage. But unlike virtually every other dam project in California, this one was approved with little public scrutiny and zero opposition from environmentalists — even though the extra 130,000 acre feet of water would come out of the heavily scrutinized San Joaquin-Sacramento River Delta.
Why is that?
As with everything involving water and the environment in California, there are multiple factors at play.
The first of those is overload. Ron Stork, policy director at Friends of the River, rattled off more than a half-dozen dam projects his Sacramento-based environmental group and others are rallying against. They include: Sites Reservoir, a 1.5 million acre-foot offstream storage site planned in Colusa County; the proposed 25-fold expansion of Pacheco Reservoir, just over the hill from San Luis and connected to it via a tunnel that runs through Pacheco Pass; and most urgently of all, the Trump-administration plan to raise Shasta Dam, which would inundate protected salmon habitat on the McCloud River.
With all that going on — in addition to the ongoing battle against the Delta tunnel — environmentalists are compelled to prioritize their efforts. And San Luis, a vital cog in the state’s conveyance system already in operation, ranks at the bottom.
“Those other projects are taking out beautiful portions of God’s green earth where San Luis Reservoir would essentially extend the bathtub ring around an existing 2 million acre-foot reservoir,” Stork said.
“So, yeah, that’s not so good. But if you’re up to your neck in alligators, some alligators are more important than others.”
‘The least worst thing’
Osha Meserve, an environmental lawyer who is among the coalition opposed to the expansion of Pacheco Reservoir by the Santa Clara Valley Water District, which receives drinking water from San Luis Reservoir, called the San Luis dam raise “the least worst thing” among all the storage projects currently planned in California.
“There’s so many destructive water infrastructure projects being proposed right now that I think people are having to prioritize the ones that they believe are the most damaging to the environment and are the worst investments of public funds,” Meserve said.
San Luis Reservoir doesn’t rise to that level, Meserve added, because one can argue the worst environmental damage occurred during its original construction. Also, the federal government is largely footing the bill.
The fact that the 10-foot capacity raise and the 10-foot seismic raise were submitted as individual projects has also added to the general confusion. Despite that, mitigation measures included in the Sisk Dam Raise and Reservoir Expansion Project essentially mirror those submitted for the seismic work. On top of that, the public comment period occurred in August 2020 during the height of the pandemic.
Only four letters not written by government agencies or water districts are included in the final Environmental Impact Report. Three were submitted from local farmers in support of more storage.
“They did it in pieces so you can’t see the entire project, and they did that at a time when public input was spotty,” said Patricia Schifferle, director of the water consulting firm Pacific Advocates. “It was designed to make sure the public doesn’t comment. That was the intentional process.”
Construction on the earth dam that contains the largest offstream reservoir in the United States will continue another seven years, at least. After which it’ll be structurally safer and 6.5% larger.
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As the nation prepares for its 250th Independence Day celebration, a decades-long California Fourth of July fireworks tradition that has raised millions for local children’s programs is going dark this year after the California Coastal Commission rejected a final effort to keep it alive, citing environmental concerns to protect the bay.
“We’ve raised over the past 14 years $2 million for kids programs here in Long Beach,” event organizer John Morris told Fox News Digital, adding the July 3 event is fully funded by the local community.
“This community pays for everything — everything. City fees, and the city doesn’t give us a break. We pay $20,000 to the city for police and fire, which I’m fine with, because there’s 100,000 people enjoying the fireworks,” said Morris, a Long Beach resident and business owner.
Morris, who owns the Boathouse on the Bay restaurant, had planned a scaled-up fireworks display this year to mark America’s 250th Independence Day.
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Long Beach residents have enjoyed the fireworks organized by John Morris for over a decade. (Scott Varley/MediaNews Group/Torrance Daily Breeze via Getty Images)
In January, Coastal Commission staff rejected the proposal, and last week commissioners unanimously upheld that decision despite an appeal backed by local, state and federal officials.
Regulators warned Morris last year that 2025 would likely be the final year for fireworks at the event, as they continue pushing organizers to switch to drone shows they say are more environmentally friendly.
The decision stands in contrast to other approvals by the commission, including a permit granted to SeaWorld allowing up to 40 nights of fireworks.
“They get 40 nights in Mission Bay. All I’m asking for is 20 minutes — it doesn’t make any sense,” Morris said.
Morris, 78, also pushed back on the environmental concerns cited by the commission, pointing to years of testing around the event.
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Due to the lack of fireworks, Morris has decided to cancel the July 3rd celebration.
“We’ve had 10 years of environmental studies,” Morris said. “We test the water before and after the fireworks and send a robotic camera into the bay to check for debris — there’s never been any. It’s been spotless.
“We’ve also had eight years of bird reports to make sure we’re not harming wildlife. We’ve never had an issue. We’ve never been written up one time. So what is it really about?”
Joshua Smith, a spokesman for the California Coastal Commission, told Fox News Digital that permits are determined on a case-by-case basis, citing environmental concerns to “protect the bay.”
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Organizer John Morris said environmental studies are regularly conducted to measure the impact of the fireworks show on the bay. (Allen J. Schaben/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)
Smith said Morris was approved for a permit to hold a drone show in lieu of fireworks. Morris told Fox News Digital such a show would cost about $200,000 — roughly four times more than traditional fireworks.
Smith confirmed that SeaWorld received a permit allowing 40 nights of fireworks. When pressed on the discrepancy, he reiterated that decisions are made individually and declined to provide further details.
Morris said the loss of the fireworks show will be felt across the community, from local businesses to families who have made the event an annual tradition.
LOS ANGELES (AP) — In the wide-open race for California governor, billionaire Tom Steyer is on a spending binge.
The hedge fund manager-turned-liberal activist is using his personal fortune to saturate TV screens and mobile phones with advertising, while his competitors accuse him of trying to use his vast wealth to buy the state’s most powerful job.
Steyer’s ads — in which he promises to bring down household costs or rails against federal immigration raids — appear inescapable at times in heavily Democratic Los Angeles, the state’s largest media market. Data compiled by advertising tracker AdImpact show Steyer has spent or booked over $115 million in ads for broadcast TV, cable and radio — nearly 30 times the amount of his nearest Democratic rival.
If he makes it through the June 2 primary election, Steyer could easily eclipse the 2010 record set by Republican Meg Whitman, who spent $178.5 million in a losing bid for governor, much of it her own money. At the time, it was the costliest campaign for statewide office in the nation’s history.
Even when ad buys from all his major competitors are combined, along with ad purchases by independent committees supporting candidates, Steyer is outspending the field by tens of millions of dollars.
“Billionaire money is flooding our state in an attempt to buy this election,” former U.S. Rep. Katie Porter, one of Steyer’s chief rivals, warned her supporters this month.
Mail-in ballots are set to go out to voters next month. Steyer is among a crowd of candidates hoping to seize a spotlight after former Democratic U.S. Rep. Eric Swalwell’s dramatic departure from the race following sexual assault allegations that he denies.
But while Steyer has ticked up in polling amid his spending splurge, he has not broken away from the field, leaving some wondering if he’s getting value for his dollars.
“If your first round of ads doesn’t move you dramatically (in the polls), the third, fourth, fifth, six, seventh and eighth rounds won’t either,” said veteran Democratic strategist Bill Carrick, who for years advised the late Democratic U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein. “There is something inherently holding Steyer back.”
In recent prior campaigns for governor, at this stage a leading candidate was taking control of the race. This year, voters appear to be shrugging at a contest that lacks a star candidate among seven leading Democrats and two Republicans.
“Somehow the campaign is frozen,” Carrick added.
History shows that money doesn’t always translate into votes.
Billionaire developer Rick Caruso spent over $100 million in 2022 in his bid to become Los Angeles mayor, much of it his own money, but he was handily defeated by Mayor Karen Bass, who spent a fraction of Caruso’s total. Billionaire former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg spent more than $1 billion of his own money on his 2020 presidential bid before dropping out. And Steyer’s money was unable to lift him into contention in the 2020 presidential contest, when he dropped out early in the year after a poor finish in the South Carolina primary.
Steyer has never held elected office.
In a 2019 interview with The Associated Press, Steyer was asked what he would say to people who think he’s trying to buy the presidency.
“I don’t think that’s possible,” Steyer said at the time, before adding, “I’m never going to apologize for succeeding in business. That’s America, right?”
His campaign did not respond directly when asked about similar criticism facing his run for governor.
“Tom now stands as the only Democrat with the grassroots energy, institutional backing and resources to advance to the general election,” spokesperson Kevin Liao said in a statement.
The governor’s race was recently reordered by two developments: Swalwell, a leading Democrat, abruptly withdrew from the race then resigned from Congress, following sexual assault allegations. Meanwhile, President Donald Trump endorsed conservative commentator Steve Hilton.
Still, there is no clear leader.
Polling in late March and early April by the nonpartisan Public Policy Institute of California found a cluster of candidates in close competition: Democrats Steyer and Porter, Republicans Hilton and Chad Bianco, and Swalwell. Other candidates were trailing. The polling was conducted before Swalwell withdrew.
Democrats have feared the party’s large number of candidates could lead to them getting shut out of the general election in November. That’s because California has a primary system in which only the top two vote-getters advance to the general election, regardless of party.
Leading Democrats are all claiming to have picked up support since Swalwell’s exit. Steyer nabbed one plum endorsement, when the influential California Teachers Association, which previously backed Swalwell, recommended him.
In his ads, Steyer promises to “abolish” U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which has been staging raids across California. In another, he laments the state’s punishing cost of housing, “Everybody needs an affordable place to live,” he says.
Rapper was stabbed 16 times by fellow inmate in May 2025 while 10-year sentence in Megan Thee Stallion shooting case
Tory Lanez has filed a $100 million lawsuit against the California Department of Corrections stemming from a May 2025 incident where the rapper was stabbed in prison.
Lanez — born Daystar Peterson and currently serving a 10-year sentence after being found guilty in the Megan Thee Stallion shooting case — also sued the warden and guards at the California Correctional Institute in Tehachapi, where the rapper was stabbed 16 times in an “unprovoked life-threatening attack” by another inmate, the lawsuit states.
Peterson was hospitalized following the May 2025 incident, suffering a collapsed lung among stab wounds to his back, torso, and head.
According to the Associated Press, the lawsuit criticized the Department of Corrections for housing Peterson with fellow inmate and alleged attacker Santino Casio, who was serving a life sentence for second-degree murder. “The choice to house Casio with Peterson was known or should have been a known danger,” the lawsuit said, adding that Tory Lanez’ “high-profile celebrity status” made him a target.
The lawsuit also said that prison guards were slow to respond to the shanking, and didn’t employ flash grenades or other measures to halt Casio’s attack.; Casio was not charged for stabbing Peterson, the Associated Press notes.
Lanez, who following his hospitalization was transferred to San Luis Obispo County’s California Men’s Colony, also alleges in the lawsuit that he never received his possessions from the California Correctional Institute in Tehachapi, including songbooks filled with lyrics to his unreleased music.
Lanez is serving a 10-year prison sentence for shooting Megan Thee Stallion in the foot during a confrontation in the summer of 2020. He was eventually convicted on several firearms charges, including assault with a firearm, in December 2022. In November 2025, his appeal was denied by a three-judge panel, and the 10-year sentence was upheld.
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