As more of California sinks into extreme drought, Gov. Gavin Newsom has asked the Legislature to appropriate billions of dollars to address critical water needs.

In the "May revise"—an update to the budget proposal he initially submitted to the Legislature in January—Newsom proposes to spend nearly $3.5 billion on water supply and resilience projects, with total investment reaching $5.1 billion over multiple years.The revised budget lays out a number of water-related priorities: providing access to safe drinking water; building water-supply reliability and improving flood protection; immediate drought support; enabling improved data collection and monitoring; and restoring fish and wildlife habitat, reconnecting wildlife corridors and removing barriers to fish passage.

"There's nothing in the budget that really helps free up water for food production and ag products," Merkley said. "There's just no water there."

Notably missing from that list is agriculture, according to Danny Merkley, California Farm Bureau director of water resources.

The governor's plan will be negotiated along with a similar plan for short-term water investments proposed in the state Senate, with the resulting

Merkley noted that the governor's proposal includes elements of Senate Bill 559 from Sen. Melissa Hurtado, D-Sanger, which would help with repairs on water conveyance facilities. compromise appearing in the final budget that must be approved and sent to the governor by June 15.

"That would pony up the state's share of the cost for repairs to the Friant-Kern Canal, the California Aqueduct and the Delta-Mendota Canal, where they have subsidence issues and have considerable work to be done," he said.

A similar bill was approved by the Legislature last year but Newsom vetoed it, saying he supported repairing the Friant-Kern Canal but felt it should be dealt with in the normal budget process.

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