Sacramento County still lacks reliable water as Serna loves a bad project | Opinion
For months, Sacramento County has been advancing a 25,000-resident community north of downtown in Natomas without a confirmed water supply. Its new solution is a supply that was slashed by 82% in the last drought, yet the county is assuming that the ugly effects of modern-day climate change will never happen again.
The latest version of the so-called Upper Westside Project near the Sacramento River adjacent to Garden Highway is even worse than the previous one. Not only does it have a dubious water supply, it would include an ugly new water treatment plant about a half-mile from the river that residents would have to pay for in their monthly water bills.
This is a bucolic part of northern Sacramento County that was intended to remain so in a 50-year city habitat conservation plan that paved the way for development in recent decades. But the county continues to defy city opposition, this habitat plan, and the reality that severe droughts and modern-day water politics imperil this supply when things turn dry.
“Development should be happening in the city and not the county,” said Sacramento City Councilmember Lisa Kaplan, who represents neighbors of this project in North Natomas. In fact, that was the years-long plan by county supervisors and the city, thanks to a 2002 agreement known as the Joint Vision.
But then, led by outgoing Supervisor Phil Serna, the county decided to violate its own agreement. It decided to open the door to 8,000 acres of urban expansion into unincorporated Natomas with massive new residential projects such as Upper Westside that are outside the county’s existing urban services boundary.
This is urban planning at its very worst. It is ironic that it is being championed by Serna, a politician with a Master of City and Regional Planning degree from Cal Poly San Luis Obispo.
Most of Upper Westside, which borders the Garden Highway to the west and Interstate 80 to the south, is within a mile of the Sacramento River. The city, along with Sutter County and state and federal wildlife agencies, agreed in 2003 to preserve this land for 50 years as part of that habitat conservation plan that opened the door to 17,500 acres of development in this region.
Serna and the county are ignoring that this plan and this commitment exists, and have they none of the necessary state and federal environmental permits to build this project. And they have ignored opposition from the Sacramento City Council.
What they could not ignore, however, was a letter from a city law firm advising them to look for a new water supply. In an exhibition of extraordinary political chutzpah, the county had assumed in its environmental analysis that the city would provide this project with all the water that it needs. City lawyers formally reminded the county that the assumption was incorrect. With a blatantly faulty environmental document, the county has had no choice but to regroup.
Instead of a water supply controlled by the city of Sacramento, the county and Upper Westside have opted for one controlled by President Donald Trump. And therein lies the problem.
How the county ignores water history
Upper Westside’s new proposed water supplier is the Natomas Central Mutual Water Company, a long-time provider of untreated Sacramento River water to Natomas farmers. The company gets its water from Shasta Dam and the Central Valley Project (CVP), run by the federal Bureau of Reclamation.
This federal agency drains much of Shasta annually to provide water to Natomas Central and local districts throughout the Central Valley and hopes for sufficient rain come winter. But then in 2020, California began to descend into what would be a three-year drought. And by 2022, Shasta was so low that Natomas Central only received 18% of a full supply, the lowest in company history and an ominous sign of things to come. This is the water source the Phil Serna is proposing, one that is unreliable and would probably be expensive for users.
Sacramento County, once again, is ignoring reality. In the county’s new water supply assessment, it is assuming that Natomas Central will never receive less than 50% of a full supply.
This is where Trump (and future presidents with similar California water politics) comes in. Trump has vowed to provide more “beautiful” water to Central Valley water. That’s impossible to do without aggressively operating Shasta. This isn’t some theoretical worry. In fact, Natomas Central wrote to the Trump administration this July, worried about how rapidly Shasta was draining, seeking to “avoid devastating impacts associated with previous CVP drought operations.)
No water provider with any degree of professionalism would ever plan for a huge residential development without proper water planning. It is only common sense, and the law, to prepare for consecutive critically dry years. And it makes even more sense to assume that what happened in the last drought could happen again.
Instead, the county is running from sound water planning. It is assuming some rosy assumptions about the future of CVP water on the Sacramento River when its new analysis is completed some time next year, setting the stage for supervisors to approve or reject this project.
Serna’s ugly legacy of wretched urban planning and betraying his own city is sealed with Upper Westside as a political career capstone. He’s a lame duck politician who is not seeking re-election last year yet is pushing a project that would be a blight on Sacramento long after he is gone.
The real political test falls to Sacramento Mayor Kevin McCarty and the rest of the City Council to oppose this project until it dies any number of possible deaths, its horrible environmental analysis just one of them.
“There has been no change in the position of where the city is,” Kaplan said.
The county is setting the stage for the ugliest land use fight this region has likely ever seen, and for the emptiest of reasons.
This story was originally published December 15, 2025 at 5:00 AM.