AENN

San Francisco Mayor London Breed broke her silence on California’s latest water war Friday, saying she wouldn’t support a state river restoration plan that would mean giving up some of the city’s pristine Hetch Hetchy water.

In addition to her unexpected announcement, Breed vetoed a resolution passed unanimously by the Board of Supervisors earlier this week that offered the city’s blessing for the little-known, but far-reaching state initiative.

The city’s now-conflicting positions on the matter, which are unlikely to be resolved before the State Water Board takes up its plan to protect degraded rivers and threatened salmon, underscores the emerging divide at City Hall over how much environmental concerns should interfere with Bay Area water supplies.

The Bay-Delta Plan calls for limiting the draws of cities and farms from California’s waterways to prevent what the state sees as an impending collapse of the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta. The estuary is the hub of the state’s river flows and an ecological hot spot. The State Water Resources Control Board is scheduled to vote on the plan Wednesday.

The plan would require rivers in the San Joaquin Valley to maintain an average of 40% of “unimpeded flow” during the spring months. That would take water from farmers — and also from San Francisco, which relies on the watershed.

Some 85% of the water used by San Francisco and its suburbs comes from the Hetch Hetchy Reservoir on the Tuolumne River, which is the waterway most likely to be affected by the Bay-Delta plan. San Francisco’s Public Utilities Commission (PUC) opposes the plan, as do farming interests and communities in the Central Valley. But environmentalists and fishing interests support the plan, which they hope will revive native fish populations.

The State Water Resources Control Board (SWRCB) will hold a final vote on the plan on Wednesday, November 7 — conveniently, one day after the midterm elections. Several Central Valley politicians of both parties — especially Republicans, and notably Rep. Jeff Denham (R-CA) of the 10th congressional district — have vigorously opposed the Bay-Delta plan, calling it a “water grab.”

Denham has attacked his Democratic opponent, Josh Harder, for failing to show up at an August rally against the Bay-Delta plan (though Harder later said that he opposes the plan).

The San Francisco Board of Supervisors had opposed the plan in an effort to send a message of protest to President Donald Trump.

But Breed had more practical concerns: “We all want the same outcome for the Bay-Delta — a healthy ecosystem that both supports fish and wildlife and provides reliable water delivery,” she said in a statement quoted by the San Francisco Chronicle. But “it is deeply irresponsible for San Francisco to take a position that would jeopardize our water supply.”