California Water Plan Update 2018 January 9, 2018 WORKING DRAFT i Water Plan Update 2018 Draft Reviewer’s Guide January 9, 2018 This document is presented as a preliminary draft of a chapter of the California Water Plan Update 2018 document. Supporting information, details, data, and full references will also be documented and available, but will not be contained in this document. Comments received on this draft by January 15, 2018, may be used to inform the February 2018 Public Review Draft of Update 2018. How to Comment Send comments to: [email protected]Attn: Paul Massera Fax: 916-651-9289 What to Review The Publications staff has not yet fully edited content for grammar, punctuation, style, consistency, accuracy, or other issues relating to readability or quality. The document will be edited for these issues prior to the release of the Public Review Draft in February 2018. Recommendations for what to focus on during this meeting are listed below. Please focus on: • Relevance and Effectiveness: Does the content speak to your constituents/members? Is the information presented in a way that is useful to elected officials? • Completeness of information: As a policy decision-support document, is all information present that an average reader might need — and presented appropriately (Considering that all supporting information not contained in the main document will be available along with the publication)? • Factual accuracy: Is anything in the text incorrect? Does any information need additional attribution to a specific source? • Logical consistency: Does the narrative build in a logical way and effectively tell the right story? Please do not focus on: • Grammar, punctuation, spelling, capitalization, or stylistic consistency (unless any of these relates to clarity or factual accuracy). • Margins, fonts, layout, spacing, etc. Formatting will be reviewed again during the copy-editing phase after your comments have been incorporated. • Clutter/wordiness/efficiency of text. • Tone/voice consistency
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California Water Plan Update 2018 January 9, 2018
WORKING DRAFT i
Water Plan Update 2018 Draft Reviewer’s Guide
January 9, 2018
This document is presented as a preliminary draft of a chapter of the California Water Plan Update 2018
document. Supporting information, details, data, and full references will also be documented and
available, but will not be contained in this document. Comments received on this draft by January 15,
2018, may be used to inform the February 2018 Public Review Draft of Update 2018.
Managing water for sustainability is critical to dynamically balancing four societal values — public health
and safety, healthy economy, ecosystem vitality, and enriching experiences. It is about being mindful of
not wasting water, and as complex as predicting and planning for the next drought or flood. On a daily
basis, every Californian is responsible for doing their part. But how can Californians know how well they
are doing, whether their actions are moving the state in the right direction?
One basic long-standing challenge to water resource resilience and reliability in California is the lack of a
consistent and practical method for assessing current and future sustainability. Productive conversations
and planning for sustainability require a mutual understanding of resource limitations, management
deficiencies, and shared intent in identifying policy priorities.
California Water Plan Update 2018 (Update 2018) presents a major improvement in the way water
policy and management priorities can be developed and coordinated at local, regional, and State levels.
The Sustainability Outlook, described in this chapter, provides a well-organized and consistent approach.
When applied at a watershed scale, the Sustainability Outlook can increase the effectiveness of State
water policies and investments. This chapter underscores the urgency and rationale for “Actions for
Sustainability” (Chapter 3), as well as the importance of follow-through by those who would implement
those actions, as identified in “Implementation Plan and Funding Options” (Chapter 5).
Update 2018 advocates that managing for sustainability needs to be rooted in those things Californians
value. Through the lens of the four societal values, the Sustainability Outlook will help identify desired
water management outcomes and indicators that can be used to gauge current status and progress
toward sustainability. Because sustainability is not something achieved once and forever, the
Sustainability Outlook will help water resource managers adapt to changing circumstances and lessons
learned. Early implementation of the Sustainability Outlook means looking back at recommended
actions in California Water Plan Update 2013 (Update 2013) to assess what has been accomplished and
make the adjustments necessary to move toward a sustainable future.
Water Management in California Today California has always been a land of extreme diversity and variability. Today, a changing climate,
changing societal values and priorities, and many geophysical and socio-economic factors are
exacerbating that variability and heightening uncertainty. Effective integrated water management
(IWM) planning and implementation can reduce variability and uncertainty pertaining to water supply,
ecosystems, and public safety. This section provides a description of the geophysical and water use
conditions that affect water resource management and IWM planning.
Mandated State Responsibilities
State government water policy and responsibilities have evolved as decision-makers gained a more holistic understanding of water, ecosystems, and the impacts of past actions (and inaction) on those resources. The State’s roles and responsibilities are outlined in the State Constitution and case law; codified in statutes, such as the California Water Code; specified through regulations and contractual obligations, such as State Water Project contracts; and
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articulated through other types of policies, proclamations, and mandates. To begin building a complete and common understanding of the culmination of current State responsibilities, Update 2018 includes an inventory of all existing State government water-related obligations and mandates. Table 2-1 summarizes these responsibilities and their estimated cost ranges.
The inventory illustrates the framework under which State government currently supports statewide water resources sustainability. It will be used to help identify opportunities to improve effectiveness and efficiency. For example, various mandates have required the State to implement an overly limited scope of solutions or to rigidly enforce statutes rather than focus on achieving desirable outcomes. Update 2018 promotes a more holistic and flexible, as well as long-term, approach to State water policy and investment. State mandates must be reviewed, aligned, and adjusted to effectively adapt to a dynamic water resource environment. This inventory provides basic data, and through the Sustainability Outlook, provides a method for articulating the need to update or remove State mandates. A recommendation to evaluate the necessity and efficacy of existing mandates is presented in Chapter 3.
[Table 2-1. Insert inventory of existing statutory, contractual, constitutional and other mandated State government responsibilities and a range of costs.]
California Water Resource Conditions and Infrastructure
Precipitation, specifically snowpack and snowmelt from the High Sierra, is the primary source of water
supply in California, though it varies from place to place, season to season, year to year. The timing,
quantity, and location of precipitation in California are largely misaligned with agricultural and urban
water uses. Efforts to align the timing, quantity, and location with those uses have contributed to
California’s growth and unintended ecosystem degradation. In any given year, the state can experience
extreme hydrologic events: In times of drought there is not enough water to meet all uses, and during
floods the excess of water threatens human lives, property, and economic well-being. In both cases, the
crafting of effective policy and regulations has required regular updates of place-specific information
and tradeoff analyses, as well as adaptive decision-making.
The 20th century was marked by the development of infrastructure, institutions, and regulations to
manage the disparities between precipitation in the winter and lack of precipitation in the summer, as
well as the geographic disparity between water availability and water demands. State, federal, and local
agencies vastly expanded the state's system of reservoirs, canals, pumps, and pipelines to capture and
move water when it was available, store it for when it was not, and deliver it to agricultural and urban
users. Significant investments were also made in the state's flood protection system, including levees
and bypasses. Because of these infrastructure improvements, California’s water systems have
increasingly served multiple purposes, and today they provide an array of benefits to the state and its
people. Yet, in many cases, the improvements resulted in unintended consequences to the natural
environment.
Water Supply Reliability. The state relies on its watersheds and groundwater basins to provide clean
and sufficient water supplies. Healthy surface water and groundwater are essential to public health and
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safety, California’s ecosystems and economic future, and enriching experiences. Surface water and
groundwater have largely been managed as separate resources when they are, in fact, a highly
interdependent system of watersheds and groundwater basins. This historical separation in managing
these resources has resulted in negative effects across the four societal values and missed opportunities
to progress toward sustainability.
There have been significant investments made in local water-supply projects, including water recycling
and desalination. Recycled water and desalination, which were once cost prohibitive, are now becoming
more viable sources. Consistent with integrated regional water management planning principles and the
Governor Brown’s California Water Action Plan, local projects have helped increase regional self-reliance
and resiliency. That said, hundreds of thousands of Californians living in disadvantaged communities still
do not have secure or clean water for their households.
The statewide water balance (Figure 2-1) demonstrates the state’s variable water use and water supply
in the face of annual hydrologic extremes. Water uses depict how applied water was used by urban and
agricultural sectors and dedicated to the environment. Water supplies depict where the water came
from each year to meet those uses.
[Figure 2-1. California Water Balance by Water Year, 2005–2015]
Environment and Ecosystems. In addition to managing water resources for domestic, industrial, and
agricultural uses, California’s water is also managed for the needs of the environment and its
ecosystems. Healthy ecosystems and watersheds provide benefits to the people of California, such as
better air quality, enriching recreational opportunities, flood attenuation, groundwater recharge, and
natural water filtration. Although a significant amount of water is needed to maintain and restore
aquatic and riparian ecosystems, the current required flows for ecosystem needs are sometimes
insufficient to prevent negative impacts on the environment. Studies of the streamflow requirements of
aquatic life, mainly represented by salmon, reveal that flows in many California rivers and streams too
often fall below minimum desirable levels (California Department of Water Resources 2013).
Fish species in California’s waterways have generally declined over time in response to changing habitat
and flows, as well as from planned and accidental introductions of non-native species. As an example, of
the more than 50 species of fish in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta (Delta) today, more than half,
including the most successful, are non-native (Delta Stewardship Council 2013). Climate change will
exacerbate these issues in the long term, and native species may be disproportionately affected (Moyle
et al. 2012).
Flooding. California is at risk for catastrophic flooding that has wide-ranging impacts because of the size
of its economy and the number of people residing in flood-prone areas of the state. Flooding occurs in
all regions of the state, in different forms and at different times. Every county in California has been
declared a federal disaster area for a flooding event at least once in the last 20 years. On the other hand,
flooding in California can produce beneficial effects and support natural functions (e.g., replenishing
ecosystems with sediment and nutrients, and helping to recharge groundwater aquifers). Flooding and
floodplains also can provide beneficial habitat conditions; however, as people and structures have
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moved into floodplains, the need for flood management for all beneficial uses — people and the
environment — has increased greatly.
Water Quality. Changes in land and water use have resulted in increased runoff of agricultural,
industrial, and urban pollutants to surface water and groundwater. Increased agricultural and urban
wastewater discharges, as well as changes in commercial and recreational activities, have negatively
affected water quality. Higher temperatures, increasing rainfall, wildfire and forest management
practices, and ecosystem degradation have further diminished water quality. As water quality
diminishes, the cost of treating it to drinking water standards increases.
Water and People. Federal agencies manage approximately 47 percent of California’s 100 million-plus
acres. The U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service is the largest public land manager in the state.
Federal- and State-owned lands, combined with other areas, such as the Delta and coastal lands, offer