Updating California Water Laws to Address Drought and Climate Change

1 Updating California Water Laws to Address Drought and Climate Change February 3 rd , 2022 ● Clifford Lee, Former Deputy Attorney General, California Department of Justice ● Jennifer Harder, Professor of Law, Legal Practice, McGeorge School of Law ● Richard Frank, Professor of Environmental Practice, U.C. Davis School of Law and former Chief Deputy Attorney General, California Department of Justice ● Barton Thompson, Professor of Law, Stanford University ● Tam Doduc, Former Board Member, State Water Resources Control Board ● Holly Doremus, Professor of Law, U.C. Berkeley ● Camille Pannu, Former Director of the Water Justice Clinic, U.C. Davis and visiting Assistant Clinical Professor of Law, U.C. Irvine School of Law Introduction Summers are getting hotter. Rain and snowpack are disappearing, and water reserves are shrinking. This reduction of readily available, adequate water resources is creating a crisis that directly harms Californians and our environment. We have developed a set of recommendations on how our water laws can be updated to address the impacts of drought and climate change. As you will see when you read the recommendations, this is not a “blow up the water rights boxes” approach. Rather it is a focused approach to updating existing laws, regulations, and funding. It is also important to note that we recognize these recommendations can and should be carefully scrutinized and refined in the various public processes. Some are more detailed all the way to the proposed legislative language. Others are more generally described. Although we gave them the best consideration we could in the time available, there will undoubtedly be additional drafting and implementation issues that will need to be considered. Also, we recognize that

Updating California Water Laws to Address Drought and Climate Change

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