Category: Ecosystems

How California’s Water Bond Is Being Spent

California has many unmet needs in its water system—most notably in the areas of flood protection, safe drinking water, stormwater treatment, and ecosystem support. While dedicated funding over the long term has been hard to come by, water bonds have helped fill some gaps in these areas. Looking at how the 2014 water bond is being spent can give us some insights into how bonds are turned into projects on the ground. This is particularly important as three new bond proposals are floated for 2018.

The state’s 2014 bond, Proposition 1, provides $7.5 billion in funding. The money is broken into seven funding categories. The bond language preauthorized $2.7 billion for water storage projects. For the other six areas, spending must be appropriated in the state budget. Once the funds are appropriated in the budget, the state agencies distribute them to selected projects.

With the 2017–18 budget, the legislature has now appropriated more than 86% of Proposition 1 funds. The largest new appropriation is more than $200 million for “Integrated Regional Water Management,” a grant program for collaborative regional projects to address complex water management challenges. In addition, more than $111 million was appropriated for flood management, reflecting statewide concerns about dam and levee infrastructure after the Oroville dam incident.

Of the Proposition 1 money appropriated, approximately $1.1 billion has been awarded for spending. That is roughly a billion dollars since June 2016. The number of projects has spiked since then as well, from 117 to 673. Even with this large increase in spending, only 14% of the bond has been awarded so far. This pace of water bond spending—about $785 million per year—is on par with patterns observed since the early 2000s.

Ecosystems in decline and disadvantaged communities that lack access to safe drinking water—problems made worse by the latest drought—lead the way in number of projects awarded, with 278 and 172 grants, respectively. Fifty-four grants have been awarded for the maintenance of Delta levees. Another 101 grants will foster regional drought preparedness. And 46 grants will be used for urban wastewater recycling projects.

The largest pot of money—$2.7 billion for water storage—is expected to be awarded in June 2018. In total, 12 projects—seven for surface water storage and five for projects that focus on storing more water underground—are competing for some portion of the money. The California Water Commission is now reviewing proposals. The winning bids will only receive funding for “public benefits” resulting from the new storage. At least half of these benefits must be for improving ecosystem conditions. Other qualifying benefits include flood protection, recreation, emergency water supplies, and water quality improvements.

About $900 million is allocated for groundwater sustainability—an area in which there is a growing need for funding to implement the 2014 Sustainable Groundwater Management Act. Of this total, $100 million is allocated to help the more than 250 newly formed Groundwater Sustainability Agencies (GSAs) develop their plans. The Department of Water Resources is now receiving proposals for these grants.

Looking beyond Proposition 1, three other water bonds have been proposed for the ballot in 2018. The $4 billion California Parks, Environment, and Water Bond was approved by the legislature, signed by the governor in September, and will appear on the June 2018 ballot. This bond would distribute a third of its revenue to park improvements, and the rest to environmental restoration and water and flood infrastructure. Specific areas include Salton Sea restoration, ecosystem improvements in the Sacramento and San Joaquin River watersheds, groundwater recharge, and safe drinking water.

Two other bonds—which would be put on the November 2018 ballot through the initiative process—are still under consideration. A bond proposal from Gerald Meral, a former state water official, would authorize $8.9 billion for various water supply and water quality projects, including water infrastructure improvements, safe drinking water projects, habitat protection, groundwater replenishment, and dam repairs. And a $7.99 billion bond proposed by environmental lawyer Joseph Caves would award half of its funds to drinking water safety improvements, and the rest to ecosystem restoration, and state and local park projects.

Clearly, bonds are an important source of one-time funding for some of the problems dogging the state’s water system. But state bonds only make up about 2% of total annual spending in California’s water sector. California must look beyond bonds to fill persistent funding gaps.

Learn more
Read our June 2016 blog post, “How is California Spending the Water Bond?”
Read California’s Water: Paying for Water (from California’s Water briefing kit)

Commentary: A New Approach to Protecting Rivers

This commentary was published in the Sacramento Bee on November 20, 2017.

California’s native freshwater fish—salmon, steelhead, sturgeon and others—continue to decline, and regulations to reverse this trend have fanned controversy. A new approach to environmental stewardship is needed. We should start by granting the environment a water right, as detailed in a new report by the PPIC Water Policy Center.

Read the full commentary on sacbee.com.

Reforming Water Management for the Environment

A longer version of this piece was recently published by Water Deeply.

It’s time for California to rethink how it manages water for the environment. Despite decades of effort, many of the state’s aquatic native species are in decline. Controversy over water for the environment remains high. The latest drought left lasting effects on already-stressed species and their ecosystems and highlighted the need for a change of course.

Our new research identifies shortcomings in current practices and lays out three reforms that could reduce conflict while improving freshwater ecosystems.

Better accounting. During the latest drought, state and federal agencies found their decision making hampered by information gaps on water availability and use and ecosystem conditions. For example, weaknesses in accounting and monitoring systems—and poor operational choices at Shasta Reservoir—pushed endangered winter-run Chinook salmon to the brink of extinction.

These management challenges were made more contentious by public perceptions about the uses of environmental water. The state lumps many things into the “environmental water” category, including flows required by regulations to maintain water quality for urban and agricultural uses. For example, during the drought, environmental water that flowed from the Delta into San Francisco Bay was widely criticized as “wasted to the sea.” Yet most of this water was needed to prevent high salinity in Delta water supplies.

We must do a better job of measuring and tracking water and ecosystem conditions—and make this information timely and transparent. The state also needs to clearly define what purposes “environmental water” serves, and separate water that benefits both water users and the environment from that used solely to support ecosystems. Better accounting will improve efficiency and provide a common understanding of water use for policy debates.

Better planning. The drought revealed major weaknesses in how California plans for and responds to water scarcity in ecosystems. While urban water managers routinely plan for drought, no such planning exists for ecosystems. With a few exceptions, fish and wildlife agencies react to—rather than plan for—severe drought.

California needs to shift from reacting to drought to anticipating and mitigating its effects on ecosystems. This can be achieved through the development of watershed ecosystem plans that set management goals and priorities for actions.

In addition, California needs annual contingency plans to prepare for uncertainty over how wet the winter and spring will be. A good model is that of Victoria, Australia, where water managers vet their plans and priorities with stakeholders. This allows water users to know what to expect, and tensions are reduced.

Ecosystem water budgets. California also needs a new way to allocate water to protect ecosystems. The over-reliance on minimum flow and water quality standards—often set for individual endangered species—limits the capacity of water managers to adapt to changing conditions.

A more nimble approach would also provide assurances to all interests about allocation of ecosystem water. This can be accomplished by granting the environment a water budget that can be flexibly managed, much as urban and agricultural water-right holders do. These ecosystem water budgets could be stored in reservoirs or groundwater basins, and even traded. The budget would be administered by a trustee guided by the watershed plan and good accounting systems. The trustee could manage the water budget to maximize benefit for ecosystem functions and, where possible, reduce impacts on other water users.

Management of California’s freshwater ecosystems—particularly during drought—is not working well for anyone. These reforms would improve conditions and reduce tensions over allocation of water–and enable freshwater ecosystems to adapt to a warmer and more variable climate.

Videos: Priorities for California’s Water

This past year brought drought-busting rain and snow and severe wildfires—extremes that tested California’s systems for managing water supply and the natural environment and foreshadow conditions of a changing climate. In light of these challenges, a PPIC Water Policy Center event in Sacramento last week brought together experts to discuss ways forward in three areas: legislative priorities for cities, farms, and rural communities; partnerships that improve the health of ecosystems; and decisions for the Colorado River and Sacramento–San Joaquin Delta.

Ellen Hanak, director of the PPIC Water Policy Center, began the program by summarizing priorities for California water outlined in a new PPIC report. These include California’s ability to recharge aquifers, maintain dams and levees, manage headwater forests and aquatic ecosystems, and provide safe drinking water to rural communities.

The first panel examined a host of proposed, passed, and pending water bills, covering topics as diverse as funding water infrastructure, improving water-use reporting, and addressing safe drinking water problems.

The lack of safe drinking water in disadvantaged communities prompted a lively conversation on how to pay for a lasting solution to the problem. Laurel Firestone, codirector of the Community Water Center, noted that while California has passed a resolution declaring a human right to water, the state’s drinking water crisis—which she said dwarfs that of Flint, Michigan—will take a more concerted effort to resolve.

One possible funding solution the panel discussed is a tax on fertilizers to pay for cleaning up groundwater contaminated by nitrate, which can cause health problems. “This is a legacy problem that stems from the over-application of nitrogen fertilizer for many, many decades,” said Dave Puglia, executive vice president of Western Growers.

The second panel tackled a problem even longer in the making: the crisis in California’s aquatic ecosystems. “We spent 150 years fundamentally changing the ecosystem… We’ve spent about 40 years actively failing to do something about it,” noted Lewis Bair, a water resource engineer with Reclamation District No. 108. “Our system is so modified, and there’s so much work to do, it will probably take a generation to make significant change.” The panelists discussed innovative projects and partnerships that are providing multiple benefits while also improving habitat for aquatic species—and how to scale them up to get broader effects at the ecosystem level.

The final panel looked at two watersheds that have outsized importance to California’s water supply: the Sacramento–San Joaquin Delta and the Colorado River. While the multi-state effort to improve management of the Colorado River has become a model of cooperation, efforts to make progress in the Delta have been more contentious.

Much of the conversation focused on WaterFix, the state’s proposal to modernize the Delta’s water export infrastructure with a pair of tunnels. Grant Davis, the new director of the California Department of Water Resources, called the Delta “the heart of the state’s water supply delivery,” and said that “the status quo will take us into unreliability and ultimately a crisis—and no one wants to manage water in a crisis.” The conversation turned to the long and difficult history of trying to resolve water conflict in the Delta, the need for reliable water supplies for agriculture, and the costs of the tunnels project.

We invite you to watch the videos from this event and hope you find the discussions illuminating and useful:

 

Learn more

Visit the Policy Priorities for California’s Water YouTube playlist
Visit the PPIC Water Policy Center

Commentary: California’s Forests are Dying—They Need Better Care

This commentary was published in the San Francisco Chronicle on October 14, 2017

California’s forests are on fire, with tragic consequences for communities around the state. While the firestorm in the Wine Country has made international headlines, many small mountain communities also were aflame or on high alert.

The focus now is on saving lives and protecting property, but when the fires are out, the state will have to face up to a major problem: Our forests are too dense and dry, and, in some areas, dying. We need a new way to manage this vital natural resource.

Read the full commentary on sfchronicle.com.

Video: Improving the Health of California’s Headwater Forests

Forests in the Sierra Nevada benefit all Californians―they provide timber, wildlife habitat, recreational landscapes, two-thirds of the state’s surface water, and other benefits. But their health is in decline from drought, insect infestation, changes in management practices, and overcrowding. These changes have raised the risk of catastrophic wildfire and tree die-off. Improving forest health will require thinning trees, which will make forests more resilient.

These were some of the observations from experts gathered in Sacramento to discuss a new PPIC report on improving forest management.

Van Butsic―an assistant cooperative extension specialist from the University of California, Berkeley, and a coauthor of the  report—gave an overview of the crisis in forest health and solutions to it. A panel discussion followed, moderated by the PPIC Water Policy Center’s Jeffrey Mount. The panelists were David Edelson, Sierra Nevada project director at the Nature Conservancy; Barnie Gyant, deputy regional forester for resources for the Pacific Southwest Region of the US Forest Service; and Susie Kocher, natural resources advisor for the Central Sierra Region at the University of California Cooperative Extension.

“We looked at prescribed fire, managed wildfire, and mechanical thinning, and we realized these three treatments were actually effective,” said Butsic. “But they’re hard to use in California because of a complex management environment.”

Some essential takeaways from the event included:

  • About two-thirds of the land in California’s headwaters is federally owned, making the federal government a key player in solving this crisis.
  • Policy and budgets prioritize fire suppression over forest management. More than half of the US Forest Service budget is for fire suppression.
  • Revenue-generating logging on forest management projects can make these projects financially viable.
  • Treatments to thin forests can negatively affect species and habitat—but catastrophic wildfire is even more harmful.
  • Climate change makes solving the crisis in our forests challenging but not impossible.

Jeff Mount wrapped up the event by noting that the forest health crisis presents an “exceptional opportunity” to stakeholders and decision makers. “We’re seeing an awakening and awareness at a level we’ve never experienced,” he said. “It’s an extraordinary moment that is not to be wasted.”

Learn more
Read Improving the Health of California’s Headwater Forests (PPIC, September 2017)
Read California’s Water: Protecting Headwaters (from the California’s Water briefing kit, October 2016)
Visit the PPIC Water Policy Center’s drought resource page

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.

Video: Building Bay Area Drought Resilience

As water supplies dwindled statewide during the recent drought, Bay Area cities struggled with the consequences—including dying trees and landscaping and reduced revenues to run water systems. But overall, Bay Area water districts weathered the drought remarkably well, according to local water experts—in part, thanks to planning, cooperative efforts among neighboring water suppliers, and enthusiastic conservation on the part of their customers.

These were some of the observations from experts gathered at a recent event at PPIC’s San Francisco headquarters. Speakers included John Marchand, the mayor of Livermore, in conversation with Ellen Hanak, director of the PPIC Water Policy Center. A panel discussion moderated by KQED public radio’s Lauren Sommer followed. Panelists were Alexander Coate of the East Bay Municipal Utility District, Peter Drekmeier of the Tuolumne River Trust, Ken Jenkins of California Water Service, and Steven Ritchie of the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission.

“There are two components to drought resilience,” said Hanak in her introductory presentation. “One is having supply investments that reduce the risk of extreme shortages, and the other is the ability to manage demand in the short term.”

Speakers discussed a range of supply and demand tactics they used to build resilience in their cities and additional ways to prepare for droughts. Topics ranged from the use of treated wastewater for recharging groundwater basins and potable uses; the use of different financial mechanisms to maintain revenue as water sales dipped; and unintended consequences that arose, such as the potentially permanent loss of street trees and other landscaping as water conservation took hold.

Some essential takeaways included:

  • Regional diversification of water supply is key to getting through dry times.
  • Mandated conservation from the state was a blunt instrument; targets based on utilities’ local water conservation plans are more appropriate for such decisions.
  • Planning for “conservation rates” is essential for water districts’ fiscal resilience and maintenance of reserves to pay for fixed costs.
  • Aquatic ecosystems took a hit during the drought. Even though Bay Area cities embraced water conservation throughout the drought, flows to the Tuolumne River and Delta were inadequate. Addressing this before the next drought hits is key to maintain ecosystem health and at-risk species.

Learn more

Read the report Building Drought Resilience in California’s Cities and Suburbs (June 2017)
Read California’s Water: Water for Cities (from the California’s Water briefing kit, October 2016)
Visit the PPIC Water Policy Center’s drought resource page

The Search for Sustainability in the Colorado River Basin

The Colorado River is a crucial water source for seven states (Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, and California) and Mexico, and like many shared rivers has its share of challenges. We talked to Doug Kenney—director of the Western Water Policy Program at the University of Colorado and a member of the PPIC Water Policy Center research network―about balancing priorities in managing the river.

PPIC: What’s the basin’s biggest challenge currently?

DOUG KENNEY: That depends on what part of the basin you’re in and what sector you work in. There’s no shortage of things to worry about. Right now, most would probably say it’s the effort to maintain the levels of water stored in the big reservoirs, Lake Mead and Lake Powell. Those reservoirs provide a lot of benefits—drought protection, recreation, and hydropower—but only if they have enough water in them. They’re about half full right now, which is about as low as they can go before mandatory cuts in water deliveries—or curtailments—kick in. It’s a math problem, essentially—managing water coming in versus what’s going out. So far in this century, people have pulled more water out than consistently flows in. Obviously, that has to change.

The more chronic issue is that the Colorado has been treated more like a plumbing system than a river, so there’s been a lot of environmental damage to the river. The big environmental concerns in the basin are a result of reduced flows and some water quality issues, such as high salinity, loss of valuable sediments, and increased water temperatures. The real challenge is to remind people we’re talking about a river—the most important ecological resource of the southwest United States.

PPIC: What efforts are underway to address the problems?

DK: The big effort at the moment in the Lower Basin is called drought contingency planning, which would help stabilize (and ultimately increase) the amount of water stored in Lake Mead. The negotiations among California, Arizona, and Nevada have gone remarkably well in this regard, although each state still has internal challenges to work through. For example, Arizona is concerned about looming curtailments of their water supply, while in California the big sticking point is the Salton Sea. The sea has become a critical issue as successful efforts to use water more efficiently in Southern California agriculture have reduced inflows, resulting in a host of environmental and public health issues. In both of the situations, the underlying desire is to protect water supplies for urban users in a way that doesn’t impose undue burdens on agricultural regions.

Another issue worth watching is the 2012 agreement between the US and Mexico that laid out cooperative efforts to manage the river. The agreement expires at the end of this year, and a new one is needed to maintain positive momentum and cooperation. Key issues between the US and Mexico include restoring the river’s delta ecosystem, enabling Mexico to store water in Lake Mead, and sharing water shortages during drought. While cooperation on the Colorado between the US and Mexico has gotten dramatically better in the past decade, people are worried that the tensions arising from the current political environment at the national level could spill over to the negotiations. But so far, the two sides are still talking, and people still seem pretty optimistic about reaching an agreement.

PPIC: How do upstream states view California’s efforts to manage its Colorado River supplies?

DK: Everyone in the basin pays attention to what’s going on in California. California has the largest and arguably the most legally secure allocation of Colorado River water rights. California’s dependence on the river is shaped by many factors, including other water issues within the state. For example, the project to build tunnels under the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta—if it progresses—would go a long way to create some room for compromise and creativity on how Southern California uses its Colorado River supplies. With every passing year it becomes more difficult to talk about the Delta and the Colorado as separate challenges. Everything is connected to everything else.

PPIC: How is climate change affecting the river basin?

DK: We’re already experiencing big climate-related changes in the basin. It’s already nearly 2 degrees Fahrenheit hotter this century compared to last, and by 2050 it will be closer to 5 degrees hotter. That results in higher evaporation rates, increased water demands, and reduced stream flows. Climate change is water change, and more heat works against all our water management goals. During this drought, precipitation has dropped only slightly but stream flows are way down, partly because it’s hotter. And that will continue―this is the part of climate projections we’re most certain of. Continued warming and the related reduction of stream flows is a huge problem.

Water management is traditionally based on the premise that the future will look like the past, but that’s not a safe assumption anymore. Our physical infrastructure isn’t ideally suited to the projected future hydrology. There’s a similar problem with our institutional infrastructure. We have a pretty sophisticated management regime that is increasingly out of step with evolving conditions. The good news is that key players in the basin now understand that the climate is affecting everything they do, and that they have to cooperate to find solutions to tough problems. People in the basin are committed to putting in the work, but there’s still a lot more to be done.

Learn more

Read California’s Water: The Colorado River (from the California’s Water briefing kit, October 2016)
Watch our 4-minute video “Colorado River”
Visit the PPIC Water Policy Center

How Unhealthy Forests Affect Water Supply

California’s mountain forests have been badly stressed by years of drought and fire suppression practices that encourage overly dense stands of trees. We talked to Scott Stephens―a forestry and wildfire expert at UC Berkeley and a member of the PPIC Water Policy Center research network―about how unhealthy forests affect the watershed.

PPIC: What is the status of the state’s forests?

Scott Stephens: California now has more than 100 million dead trees, mostly in the central and southern Sierra. This has implications for water supply, wildfire management, local economies, and many other issues. The die-off is a symptom of unsustainable forest conditions. Drought is part of the California landscape, but why are we seeing such profound mortality? The drought caused more trees to compete for less water and increased infestations of bark beetles, which kill trees. Droughts are getting warmer, which stresses the trees more. But the underlying cause is unsustainably dense forests. Forest management in the past century increased forest density by removing the most common ecosystem process that once thinned the forest: fire. We need to reduce tree density in Sierra forests so they are more resilient to drought.

Fires start more easily in recently killed forests because embers have more dead foliage to land on. Fighting fires is much harder because there’s an increased risk that standing dead trees will fall and kill people. And since most of these dead trees will never be removed, in 10 to 15 years they’ll be on the ground. This will increase the fuel load substantially and make for hotter fires.

PPIC: What are the consequences to our water supply from dying or burning forests?

SS: It’s useful to compare the effects of a large uncontrolled wildfire—such as the 2013 Rim Fire in San Francisco’s Hetch Hetchy watershed—with what is going on in a part of Yosemite that has had regular fires over the past 40 years. In the Rim Fire zone, trees were killed over a vast area, and sediment and fire debris has moved into streams and reservoirs. By comparison, there’s an area in Yosemite called Illiloutte Creek basin, where small natural fires have been allowed to burn—unlike in most forests, where all fires are extinguished as quickly as possible. We’ve seen a jigsaw puzzle of fire-changed landscapes develop in Illiloutte basin over this time and a change in forest density. For example, an area that was once a solid pine forest is now a wetland after fire cleared about 10 acres of trees. Now we’re doing research to see if water in that basin is increasing. One thing is certain: fewer trees use less water. Also, in denser forests some snow stays in the canopy and is more likely to go back into the atmosphere rather than seep into the ground.

PPIC: Given the scope of the problem, what are our management options?

SS: There are three potential options that would improve on current practices. The first is to manage lightning fires in some areas—such as the remote upper watersheds―so we can naturally reduce forest density. This option can be scaled up relatively fast. We’d need to monitor these fires carefully and allow them to work―just as they’ve done in Yosemite for the past 40 years. Three national forests have proposed allowing managed lightning fires on about two-thirds of their land―Inyo, Sierra, and Sequoia. A second option is to do more prescribed burns. These will be smaller in scale than lightning fires. Lastly, we can use ecologically based mechanical thinning of forests, which can be combined with prescribed burns.

These fixes will be expensive in some areas. But fire suppression currently costs us about $2.5 billion a year just on federal lands—and these methods can help bring down that cost. Shifting the federal firefighting budget so more money goes for forest management could help.

Learn more

Read California’s Water: Protecting Headwaters (from California’s Water briefing kit, October 2016)
Watch our 3-minute video “Headwaters”
Read “Managing Wildfires Requires New Strategies” (PPIC Blog, September 23, 2015)
Visit the PPIC Water Policy Center’s drought resource page