The California Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006 designates the State Air Resources Board as the state agency charged with monitoring and regulating sources of emissions of greenhouse gases. The act authorizes the state board to include in its regulation of those emissions the use of market-based compliance mechanisms. Existing law requires all moneys, except for fines and penalties, collected by the state board from the auction or sale of allowances as part of a market-based compliance mechanism to be deposited in the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund. Existing law requires, beginning with 2026–27 fiscal year, that funds be allocated according to a specified priority, including, among other things, that the sum of $1,000,000,000 be reserved for appropriation by the Legislature in the annual Budget Act or other statute.

This bill would require, of that amount, beginning with the 2026–27 fiscal year and continuing through the 2046–47 fiscal year, the sum of $150,000,000 be appropriated annually, to the Department of Water Resources for the purposes of supporting capital improvements to restore the original design water conveyance capacity for state water conveyance systems impacted operationally by land subsidence, and the sum of $150,000,000 be appropriated annually to the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta Conservancy for projects in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta to improve existing levees, as specified, thereby making an appropriation. The bill would prohibit funds provided by these provisions from being expended to pay the costs of the design, construction, operation, mitigation, or maintenance of any additional Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta conveyance facilities, as provided.