Month: August 2017

Groundwater Quality Is Key to Quantity

To improve groundwater management we need to focus on more than the quantity our aquifers can supply. We also need to focus on quality.

Groundwater levels have been dropping in many of the state’s major aquifers, especially in parts of the Central Valley. This chronic issue was made worse by increased pumping during the latest drought. Lower water tables have resulted in increased pumping costs, the need for deeper wells, land subsidence, and salt-water intrusion into groundwater.

But groundwater supply is also harmed by pollutants, particularly nitrate and salt. Nitrate is widespread in many rural areas. Its major source is nitrogen fertilizer and manure. Salt, one of the most common pollutants, is in fertilizers, manure, and treated urban wastewater, and also occurs naturally. Both pollutants can compromise and ultimately reduce drinking water supplies. Salty groundwater is damaging to crops. In some areas, other contaminants such as naturally occurring arsenic also pose problems for drinking water.

Recently passed regulations seek to address both aquifer depletion and contamination issues with the goal of protecting groundwater resources for the long run. A suite of policies extended existing water quality protections to groundwater: the Central Valley Dairy Order, the Irrigated Lands Regulatory Program (ILRP), and the Central Valley Salinity Alternative for Long-Term Sustainability (CV-SALTS). More broadly, the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA) directs agencies in charge of addressing groundwater depletion also avoid degrading water quality.

These regulations mark a historic shift in how groundwater is managed in California. They each provide distinct frameworks for addressing quality and quantity challenges. To reap the most benefits from their implementation, it will be important to coordinate management activities.

Under SGMA, more than 250 newly formed groundwater sustainability agencies will be in charge of managing groundwater resources. The jurisdiction and size of these agencies vary, and most groundwater basins have multiple  groundwater sustainability agencies. The ILRP, which regulates runoff from irrigated lands, includes 12 coalitions statewide and thousands of farmers with individual waste discharge permits. The most effective solutions will require coordination and collaboration beyond the boundaries of these individual entities.

For instance, one way to address groundwater depletion is through intentional groundwater recharge. Because groundwater doesn’t respect property lines, recharge is best managed at a larger scale than most farms―ideally at the scale of an entire basin. Groundwater recharge can also affect water quality.

Depending on the soil type and crop choices, intentional recharge can improve or degrade the underlying water quality. Recharging in ways that benefit groundwater quality will entail coordinating cropping patterns, irrigation systems, and agronomic practices. The ILRP coalitions have already taken steps to assess areas that could be vulnerable to groundwater quality problems, promote farm practices that reduce pollution, and improve water quality monitoring. There are likely to be opportunities for GSAs to benefit from sharing resources on monitoring and planning with entities that manage water quality, such as ILRP coalitions. Forming partnerships in the early stages of drafting groundwater sustainability plans would be a good next step.

Coordinated management has the potential to address some tough, persistent water quality and quantity challenges, but it will generally take years before the benefits become apparent. Since groundwater depletion and quality degradation affect poor rural communities most acutely, more expeditious approaches are also needed. The state has been working on solutions to address the urgent public health issues these communities face. The SGMA also brings new opportunities to coordinate with local institutions to distribute and prioritize available resources.

Learn more

Read “Groundwater in California” (PPIC fact sheet, May 2017)
Read “California’s Water Quality Challenges” (PPIC fact sheet, October 2015)
Visit the PPIC Water Policy Center

California’s Partisan Divide on Higher Education

New national polling shows a big divide has opened up between Democrats and Republicans on higher education. A Pew Research Center poll taken in June shows that a majority of Republicans and those who lean Republican (58%) think colleges and universities have a negative effect on the way things are going in the country, while a vast majority of Democrats and those who lean Democrat (72%) think colleges and universities have a positive impact. This is a big change from two years ago, when majorities in both parties said higher education institutions had a positive impact on the direction of the nation.

Is there a similar partisan divide over higher education in California? The PPIC Statewide Survey found a similar divergence over the past few years when we asked a different question: Is the state’s public higher education system generally going in the right or wrong direction? In 2016, California Republicans were far more likely than Democrats to say the system is headed in the wrong direction. This marked a change in the five years since we’d last asked this question. When we asked the question in 2011—toward the end of the recession and after large tuition increases—Californians in both parties overwhelmingly said higher education was moving in the wrong direction. Unlike national polling, which shows a shift in Republican opinion, PPIC surveys show a shift in the opinions of Democrats, who have become more positive, while Republicans have remained about the same.

Californians’ responses to other survey questions about higher education point to longer-term partisan divisions. Republicans have generally been more likely than Democrats to say that the overall quality of education in California’s public colleges and universities is a big problem or somewhat of a problem. Views about the direction and overall quality of public higher education are reflected in attitudes about California’s three public higher education systems. Currently about half of Republicans say that each of the systems—community colleges, California State University, and University of California—are doing an excellent or good job. More Democrats—about three-fourths—express this view.

Partisans have also historically differed on higher education funding. Compared to Republicans, Democrats are more likely to say that higher education does not receive enough funding, and Democrats are generally willing to pay higher taxes to support higher education.

Interestingly, there is some evidence that Californians’ views about the importance of college for individual success differ along party lines. A majority of Democrats (68%) say a college education is necessary for a person to be successful in today’s working world, while a majority of Republicans (72%) say there are other pathways to success. It is also true, however, that Californians in both parties have become more optimistic about the chances of success without a college degree since 2011—when the state was recovering from recession.

Finally, there are some areas of agreement. We find that members of both parties generally think that college affordability is a problem and students have to borrow too much money. Perhaps most significant is our finding that overwhelming majorities of both Republicans and Democrats say that the state’s system of higher education is important to California’s economic future and quality of life.

Learn more

Visit the PPIC Higher Education Center

Testimony: Managing California’s Headwater Forests

Van Butsic, a forestry expert with UC Berkeley’s cooperative extension and a member of the PPIC Water Policy Center’s research network, testified before the Little Hoover Commission in Sacramento today (August 24, 2017).

The hearing focused on California forest management and was held in response to the sharp increase in the number of trees dying in headwater forests. Butsic drew his prepared remarks from the PPIC policy brief California’s Water: Protecting Headwaters. Here is a summary.

The committee asked Butsic to explain the risks to the state’s forested upper watersheds and ways to improve forest health. He described a number of risks, including:

  • Policies aimed at extinguishing fires as quickly as possible—combined with reduced timber harvesting—have resulted in exceptionally dense vegetation in many California forests, increasing the risk of extreme wildfires;
  • The expansion of rural communities into wildland areas has complicated efforts to manage fire risk, and;
  • Stress from drought and a changing climate.

Butsic said California stands to lose timber production, wildlife habitat, recreational opportunities, and water supply if this natural infrastructure continues to decline. He noted that the bulk of forestry funding is spent on putting out fires rather than managing forests for long-term resilience.

Butsic explained that to improve health of headwater forests, California must increase the pace and scale of management tools such as fire and forest thinning. This will require management, regulatory, and legal reforms. He described ongoing research being undertaken by PPIC into ways to improve forest management. And he noted that due to a diverse mix of land ownership in the headwaters area, collaborative approaches will be critical.

Learn more
PPIC is preparing a report on California’s headwater forests. Register to attend the related event, Improving the Health of California’s Headwater Forests.

UC Admissions: What the Numbers Mean

The University of California’s recently released admissions data shows that about 62% of all applicants were admitted to the system for fall 2017. There are big differences among campuses: admission rates range from 16% at UCLA to 72% at UC Merced. And UC expects that less than half of admitted students will enroll.

Figure 2: A Majority of Students Admitted to UC Enroll ElsewhereThe proportion of admitted students who enroll is called the yield rate. The yield rate is a product many factors, including which campuses students are admitted to and whether they are California residents. UC’s systemwide yield rate was around 45% last year; at each campus, the yield rate for nonresidents (27%) is much lower than that for residents (54%). The Berkeley and LA campuses have the highest yield rates, with almost half of their admitted students enrolling. Only about one in five admitted students enroll at the other campuses.

Where do students who decide not to go to the UC campus(es) that admitted them end up enrolling? UC generally faces competition from private schools in California and public and private universities in other states. Students also choose to go to a local CSU or plan to start at a community college, and low yield rates at some campuses are a byproduct of competition among UC schools. The average UC applicant for fall 2016 applied to four UC campuses, and the average admitted student was admitted to 2.3 campuses.

A UC school with higher admissions rates isn’t necessarily serving a larger number of Californians. The LA and Irvine campuses are about 50 miles away from one another and receive about the same number of resident applications. In 2016 UC Irvine admitted more than twice as many California residents (37% of applicants) as UCLA (18%). However, students admitted to UCLA are about twice as likely to enroll there, which leaves the two campuses with about the same number of entering students.

Figure 2: UC Schools with Different Admission Rates Can End Up With Similar Enrollment

The story is similar for nonresidents. Because UC’s yield rate for nonresidents is about half the yield rate for residents, a larger share of nonresidents are admitted: in 2016, nonresidents made up 33% of admitted applicants but only 19% of enrollees.

Campuses generally have state support and classroom space for a certain number of students and use their knowledge of yield rates to reach that target. Campuses with lower yield rates make many more admission offers, and all campuses make offers to more nonresidents than they plan to enroll.

That admissions strategy can be a problem for less competitive institutions. It is impossible, after all, to know if any given student will decide to enroll, and a small change in the yield rate can have big consequences. For example, while UC Irvine’s yield rate was 23%, a small jump to 25% would have resulted in more than 400 additional enrollees. Officials at Irvine maintain that over-enrollment was not the reason for their decision last month to rescind offers of admission to about 500 students (the campus has since readmitted many of those students). However, it is easy to see how high-stakes admissions decisions based in part on predictions of applicant behavior could quickly lead to either over- or under-enrollment.

Learn more

Visit the PPIC Higher Education Center

New Water Official’s Views on Salton Sea, Other Priorities

California’s State Water Board has a broad mandate to oversee our complex water system and balance all beneficial uses of water. Joaquin Esquivel―the newest member of the board and a member of the PPIC Water Policy Center’s advisory council―brings broad experience working on state and federal water issues, and personal and professional experience with the challenges of the Salton Sea. We talked with him about his priorities for California’s water issues.

PPIC: You’ll be engaged with the board’s effort to reduce environmental and public health problems at the Salton Sea. Why is this issue important?

JOAQUIN ESQUIVEL: The health and viability of the sea is important in many ways. It’s important to the health of our families and communities throughout the Imperial and Coachella Valleys. Many people who live there already struggle with poor environmental quality. It’s critical to the Pacific Flyway and the more than 400 bird species that use the sea. It’s key to the economies of surrounding communities, which could take an estimated $29–70 billion hit over the next few decades if the sea declines unchecked. And it’s important to California’s water future.

People sometimes forget how much water California gets from the Colorado River, which was significant to Southern California’s resiliency during the recent drought. There is a deep and abiding connection between the sea’s success and our success at better managing the Colorado River, which itself has been stressed by drought.

The issues facing the sea are not unlike other big challenges we face in many other watersheds in California: overlapping public health, economic, and ecosystem needs; limited resources; legacy challenges; and insufficient funding for the scope of work that needs to be undertaken.

Resolving the Salton Sea’s issues requires a tremendous amount of cooperation. The good news is that we’re at the right moment for decisive action. The California Natural Resources Agency has developed a common vision and plan with stakeholders on projects we need to undertake immediately and over the next 10 years.

PPIC: What are you most optimistic about regarding California’s water issues? And what are you most concerned about?

JE: I’m excited by the fact that the drought really focused Californians on water and brought forward communities, voices, and leaders with a passion to break through the old fights and work together to tackle the state’s most difficult water challenges. The drought has created incredible opportunities for collaboration. For example, we’re seeing collaborative efforts in the Central Valley to find solutions to the lack of safe drinking water in some of our poorest and most disadvantaged communities. There’s growing understanding of the importance of expanding and maintaining watershed health, along with growing partnerships between farmers—our greatest assets as stewards of our land—academia, and NGOs to rebuild and strengthen the resilience of our ecosystems. I’m excited that there’s a new generation of engagement on water policy, and it couldn’t come at a better time.

What keeps me up at night is the huge amount of work that needs to be done to resolve our greatest challenges and always feeling that we don’t have the dollars we need to undertake it all. Inadequate funding is always going to be a challenge, so we need to figure out how to better align local, state, and federal dollars, policies, and priorities. It’s really important that we solve the problem of underfunding our water systems and the ecosystems that underpin them.

PPIC: Talk about the governor’s new joint project with the governor of Maryland to develop a “water policy learning network” for other governors.

JE: The National Governors Association staff had been hearing from its members that states were interested in learning about managing water resources, and they approached Governor Brown and Governor Larry Hogan about co-chairing an initiative. I was fortunate to have been tapped as the advisory group co-chair, along with Maryland’s secretary of the environment. The first of two Water Policy Institutes was held earlier this week in Maryland. The second will be held next year in California. The initiative is an opportunity for states to share and discuss best practices in the management of water resources. While it will be useful to share the ways in which California has been a leader on conservation, recycling, and integrated water management, this is also an opportunity for us to learn from other states. We’re right to feel proud of the leadership California has shown on water, but we still have a long way to go in many respects. This initiative is the ideal opportunity to learn from the wealth of experience in other states.

Learn more

Read “Remaking the Salton Sea” (PPIC Blog, April 6, 2017)
Read California’s Water: The Colorado River (from the California’s Water briefing kit, October 2016)
Visit the PPIC Water Policy Center

CSU Ends Remedial Courses

Last fall, more than one in three students starting as freshmen at the California State University (CSU) system had to take a remedial course in either English or math before they could take college-level courses in those subjects. These remedial courses generally cover material from high school and don’t count toward a degree—even though they cost the same amount and require as much class time as a college course. But this situation is about to change. Starting in 2018, all CSU freshmen will be placed in college-level courses. Those who are underprepared will receive some kind of extra support.

This is the most recent in a series of CSU reforms intended to place freshmen students into college-level courses. In 2004, the Early Assessment Program (EAP) began giving 11th graders an indication of their readiness for CSU and identified the courses they would need to complete their senior year to avoid remediation. More recently, incoming students who were required to take remediation were enrolled in Early Start, which used summer courses to prepare students for college coursework in the fall. The elimination of all remedial courses is a big change: while previous programs aimed to prepare students for college-level work before their freshmen year, CSU will now focus on helping students complete college-level work regardless of their preparation.

This policy change comes as CSU embarks on its new graduation initiative, whose goal is to raise graduation rates and close achievement gaps by 2025. What kind of impact might the elimination of remedial courses have on college completion? Students who require remediation in one or more subjects are about half as likely to graduate within four years as their peers who are ready for college-level work. The share of CSU students identified as needing remediation has been dropping for some time, and as remediation rates have fallen, six-year and four-year graduation rates have increased.

The general decline in remediation indicates that students have become better prepared over time, either in K–12 or through programs like Early Start. Though eliminating remediation will not affect how prepared students are when they start college, there is still reason to believe CSU could see an increase in graduation rates. As PPIC’s study of community college remediation showed, long remedial course sequences leave students many points of exit and can be barriers to success. Indeed, about 13% of CSU students who entered remediation in 2015 failed to complete remediation and were not at the university by their second year. With the end of remediation at CSU, students will have fewer potential exit points, they will be able to earn more college credits in their first year, and many may experience more success in college-level courses due to additional support. These potential benefits could help more students graduate and shorten their time to degree.

In addition to eliminating remediation, CSU is making changes to the Early Start program and course placement policies to further prepare students and help them find the right classes. These changes could help narrow the graduation gap between races. In 2016, only about 18% of white CSU students required some form of remediation, while about half of Latino and about 60% of African American students needed remediation in at least one subject. If these new policies do increase graduation rates, many traditionally underserved students may benefit.

Learn more

Visit the PPIC Higher Education Center
Read the PPIC report Preparing Students for Success in California’s Community Colleges

Is College Worth it? What Graduates Say

As college registration deadlines approach, thousands of Californians are making important decisions to invest in their education and long-term career prospects. The vast majority of parents (85%) hope their child earns at least a bachelor’s degree, according to the PPIC Statewide Survey. But how do graduates see it? And how well-informed are their decisions?

The good news is that most people who earn degrees believe their investment was worth it. According to national survey data, 71% of those who earned an associate degree and 73% of those with a bachelor’s degree agree their education was worth the cost. Going beyond the economic value, a large share also find engagement in the work they do. In fact, a sizeable share of associate- and bachelor’s-degree holders report deep interest in their work (41% and 38%, respectively) or say that they have the ideal job (29% and 26%, respectively).

Although having an “ideal job” may be a very high bar to achieve, these results suggest that a majority of degree earners are not terribly satisfied or engaged with their work. Indeed, in a wider-ranging national survey conducted recently, a majority of college graduates indicate that they would change their degree, their college, or their major if they could do it again. Among associate-degree holders, 23% would seek a different degree—more than double the share of bachelor’s-degree holders who say the same. But graduates with bachelor’s degrees are not entirely satisfied with their choices either: 40% would study a different major (compared to 36% among associate-degree holders). And the survey finds curiously similar responses regardless of a person’s income level. Though higher-income Americans are slightly less likely to regret their college choices, a large fraction of them (35–45% for those with income over $100,000) would still make a different choice.

These results confirm that while college pays off, there is room to improve how well-informed prospective students are about their colleges, majors, and degrees. On this blog, we’ve written about the economic value of college credentials and how it varies across fields of study. We’ve also highlighted the need for data to inform student choices, given the sizeable financial commitment entailed.

Among the state’s public colleges and universities, California’s community colleges are ahead of the curve in providing information online about institutional performance, future salary, and more. Other institutions should follow suit. However, the survey results above suggest it is perhaps equally important to design courses and programs that ensure students can efficiently and effectively identify the degrees and majors best suited to them. Indeed, this is one of the tenets of the guided pathways movement taking place at community colleges across the country and in California. To inform and improve the college decisions of Californians, it is critical that these practices expand beyond community colleges, so that K–12 schools and four-year universities are also working to ensure students have comprehensive information when choosing their pathway into a career.

Learn more

Visit the PPIC Higher Education Center

Bringing Order to Groundwater Management

California’s water management is a complex stew with many cooks. At the local level, hundreds of irrigation districts and urban water agencies and a few thousand small drinking water suppliers are responsible for a wide variety of water-related issues. And it just got more complex: as of June 30, more than 250 newly formed Groundwater Sustainability Agencies (GSAs) were added to the mix.

The 2014 Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA) directed local agencies to develop institutions, plans, and implementation strategies to sustainably manage their groundwater resources for the long run. As a result, more than 250 local agencies have formed GSAs in 140 “priority basins” (those that account for most of California’s groundwater use). More than 70 percent of the new GSAs are in the San Joaquin Valley and the Sacramento Valley—regions whose large groundwater basins supply farms, cities, and small rural communities.

A variety of parties can form GSAs, though most are made up of local agencies such as counties, cities, and irrigation districts. A GSA can also be formed by a single entity, such an irrigation district—Westlands Water District has formed one. It can be formed by groups of agencies, as is the case with the Merced Subbasin GSA, which includes six public agencies with water management or land use authority. These parties vary widely in their interests and experience in groundwater management.

The first task of the GSAs will be to develop groundwater sustainability plans for their basins. In basins with multiple GSAs, the agencies will either have to create a common plan or have an agreement to coordinate plans. This is no small task, given the number of agencies and their institutional diversity. Anticipating some of these complexities, the Department of Water Resources has already published a set of documents to guide plan development.

Although GSAs and their local partners will have the lead responsibility for developing and implementing groundwater sustainability plans, the state can play a pivotal supportive role. Given the varying technical and institutional capacity at the local scale and the challenges of coordinating different plans, a number of tools could help GSAs implement effective programs in ways that reduce conflict and foster success.

Developing common accounting standards is a top priority. GSAs must speak the same language to ensure consistency in groundwater budgets across agencies and basins. Statewide standards are needed on matters such as units used and frequency of measurement to enable comparability, auditability, and consistent analysis and management. Accounting templates and modeling standards could help guide this process. The Department of Water Resources has developed online reporting standards for other water sectors—such as the templates for submitting Urban Water Management Plans that standardize basic information agencies must submit—which might be a good model to follow. This might also help bridge some chronic water data gaps that have made it more difficult to manage California’s water.

The state could also provide technical guidance on developing local monitoring and enforcement regulations, which will be key to implementing the plans. Critically overdrafted basins—where long-term pumping has exceeded the rate of replenishment—will need to develop strategies to increase recharge and reduce pumping. Doing this well will require measuring groundwater extraction, setting overall pumping limits, and establishing pumping allocations. These tasks will help to establish a water budget, and are also essential to implementing innovative mechanisms such as incentives for recharge, storing groundwater for later use, and trading, which can add flexibility in groundwater management. Making these tools available for every agency, no matter its size and capabilities, will help ease the transition to sustainable management with minimal economic disruptions.

Getting to groundwater sustainability might be the most challenging issue in California’s water management for the foreseeable future. But it also provides opportunities to overcome some chronic water management gaps and encourage stakeholders to work cooperatively in a basin-scale approach. Local leadership is key to defining the proper solutions for each basin. But state guidance will also be essential to coordinate efforts and to promote innovation and knowledge sharing across the intricate landscape of agencies.

Learn more

Read the report Accounting for California’s Water (July 2016)
Read the report Water Stress and a Changing San Joaquin Valley (March 2017)
Read “Groundwater in California” (PPIC fact sheet, May 2017)
Visit the PPIC Water Policy Center