Category: PPIC Water Policy Center

Video: Managing Drought in a Changing Climate

As San Francisco began welcoming visitors arriving for this week’s Global Action Climate Summit, the PPIC Water Policy Center hosted an event on the impact of climate change on California’s water system.

The Monday event brought together a panel of experts to discuss reforms that could improve resilience and galvanize action to prepare for future droughts. The panelists were Maria Herrera, who works on water issues for Self-Help Enterprises and is a member of the California Water Commission; Felicia Marcus, chair of the State Water Board; Cannon Michael, president of Bowles Farming Company; and Tim Ramirez, a member of the Central Valley Flood Protection Board. The panel was moderated by Greg Dalton, founder and host of Climate One.

Ellen Hanak, director of the center, kicked off the evening with a summary of new research by PPIC on managing drought in a changing climate. After noting that California is already seeing changes from a warming climate, she said that “a lot of things we’re recommending are going to be very important and very useful as soon as we can do them.” She reviewed the report’s four main suggested areas of reform: plan ahead, modernize the water grid, update water allocation rules, and find the money to pay for these reforms. “It’s a plan that would be great for the next governor,” she said.

Dalton launched the panel discussion with a question about the need to modernize the state’s water grid—the network of above- and below-ground storage and conveyance systems that connects most water uses in the state. Ramirez said that the conveyance system needs updating because it is “totally insufficient for the precipitation we have now.” For example, the San Joaquin River system “was plumbed for snowmelt―very predictable, slow runoff―but that’s not what happens anymore.” He discussed the need for expanded floodplain capacity to help absorb floods.

Marcus said, “The answer is to maximize every drop—figuring out how every molecule of water … can be used over and over again and used for multiple things.” She said improved information and modernizing our thinking about infrastructure are steps toward achieving this goal.

Herrera noted that disadvantaged rural communities, which are most likely to face drought-related water shortages, find it difficult to engage in discussions about the water system. She called for ensuring that local communities are included in decision making about water grid upgrades, and added that they should have a say in “where to place storage, how water that is stored gets used and allocated, and for what benefits.”

Other topics of discussion included addressing growing wildfire risk; ensuring safe, reliable drinking water for the most vulnerable communities; advice for the next governor on managing climate volatility (Marcus: “the key is to pick up the baton and run with it.… [Water] is an issue on which leadership can make a difference on so many things”), and ways to reduce conflict over water.

Cannon Michael seconded the need for leadership to tackle climate change—and urged all Californians to heed that call. “We need to think about the California we have, what an amazing state this is, and lead from that. We’ve got to push past the voices that are trying to drag us apart, and work on solutions from the middle. We can solve any problem that we all put our minds together on.”

Make California’s Water Grid Climate-Ready

Next week people from around the globe will gather at the Global Climate Action Summit in San Francisco to explore solutions to climate change. California has long played a leadership role in reducing climate emissions. But the state has a crucial weakness in its climate readiness: its vast water system. Modernizing California’s “water grid”―the linked network of above- and below-ground storage and conveyance systems that connects most water use in the state―can help reduce the costs and impacts of a changing climate.

The PPIC Water Policy Center put together a team of experts in climate science, hydrology, ecology, engineering, economics, and law to review the weak points in California’s water system and recommend actions to build the system’s climate resilience. The focus of the work was on managing water scarcity, using lessons learned from California’s most recent drought.

We found that five climate pressures will seriously impact the state’s water system: warming temperatures, shrinking snowpack, shorter and more intense wet seasons, more volatile precipitation patterns, and rising seas.

During drought, California relies heavily on its water grid to manage supplies. This system will become even more important for managing more intense droughts of the future. Yet elements of this grid are in trouble, and climate pressures will make it harder to manage competing demands—particularly the need to store more water for drought while also capturing high flows to reduce flood risk, while also protecting freshwater ecosystems.

California’s climate is changing and drought intensity is increasing. Adapting to and preparing for change will require a more robust, better-integrated water grid. This should be a top priority for the next governor.

To make the grid climate-ready, the new administration should undertake a thorough assessment of weaknesses in the state’s storage and conveyance system—including important canals and aqueducts that help recharge groundwater, deliver surface water, and manage floods―and launch a major upgrade of this network.

The state’s many underground basins have a much large capacity for storage than surface reservoirs and will become much more important as a drought reserve. Strategic investments are needed to help California store water more effectively and take better advantage of opportunities to trade and share it—an important way to reduce the social, economic, and environmental costs of using less.

Adapting to a more volatile climate—including more intense winter storms—will also require more operational flexibility to enable storage and conveyance facilities to work together as an integrated water supply and flood management system. Investments will be needed to update hydrological assumptions for reservoirs, and improve water accounting in all sectors, including groundwater recharge and use.

This water infrastructure revolution won’t just be technically challenging: it will also require finding reliable funding to pay for necessary investments. Californians will need to look beyond general obligation bonds and develop long-term funding sources to adapt the water grid to a changing climate.

Strong leadership from state and local institutions has guided the development of the water system that California relies on today. Despite its many problems, this system has mostly served the state well, even in the face of occasional severe drought. Leadership—an essential ingredient for continued progress in water management—is a key requirement to prepare for droughts of the future.

2020 Census: Counting the San Joaquin Valley

The decennial census plays an essential role in American democracy. The stakes are huge for California, and 2020 is fast approaching. This series of blog posts takes a detailed look at California communities that may be at risk of being undercounted.

PPIC’s new interactive census maps are an important tool for Californians working to ensure an accurate census count. Using estimates from the Census Bureau and the Federal Communications Commission, they highlight hard-to-count communities across the state and pinpoint reasons why certain areas may be hard to reach.

Home to 4.3 million people, the San Joaquin Valley may be one of California’s hardest-to-count regions in 2020. Encompassing about 11% of the state’s population, the valley runs south from San Joaquin County through Stanislaus, Merced, Madera, Fresno, Tulare, Kings, and Kern Counties. Most of the communities at risk of being undercounted in the region live south of Stanislaus County through Kern County. For example, 33% of census tracts in Fresno County are likely to be very hard to count, according to Census Bureau estimates that draw on demographic characteristics and historical trends. But only 7% of tracts in Stanislaus are very hard to count. Households in these very hard-to-count areas are less likely to respond initially to census forms and are therefore at risk of being undercounted.

Some highlights:

  • An undercount could reshape the legislative landscape of the San Joaquin Valley. Since legislative district lines will be redrawn based on the census, disproportionately undercounting parts of the San Joaquin Valley could reshape the region’s political representation. And while hard-to-count communities are distributed across several counties in the region, they are concentrated in fewer legislative districts. In Congressional Districts 16 (Costa) and 21 (Valadao), for example, about 42% of census tracts are likely to be very hard to count. Undercounting could also affect the northern San Joaquin Valley, which has hard-to-reach areas despite having fewer historically undercounted populations.
  • Undercounting people of color and noncitizens could disproportionately affect legislative districts in the central and southern San Joaquin Valley. This area has particularly high shares of groups that tend to be undercounted in the census—African Americans, Latinos, and Native Americans, as well as noncitizens, who may be even less likely to respond in 2020 due to the planned addition of a citizenship question. A total of six legislative districts have populations that are at least 65% African American, Latino, or Native American and at least 15% noncitizen: Congressional Districts 16 and 21; State Senate Districts 12 (Cannella) and 14 (Vidak); and State Assembly Districts 31 (Arambula) and 32 (Salas).
  • Another factor driving the San Joaquin Valley’s overall risk of being undercounted is the high share of young children. Young children are historically underrepresented in the census. There are particularly high concentrations of families with young children in the central and southern San Joaquin Valley: children under 5 years old make up 8% or more of the population in Fresno, Kern, Kings, Merced, and Tulare Counties—among the highest concentration in the state.
  • Housing conditions may make an accurate count especially challenging in the western San Joaquin Valley. In this area, relatively large shares of housing units are rentals, overcrowded rentals, and/or mobile homes—all of which can make residents harder to find and count accurately. For example, more than 20% of households live in mobile homes in some northwestern parts of San Joaquin County and some southwestern parts of Tulare County.
  • Limited internet access may be an issue in certain areas throughout the region. The Census Bureau plans to collect the majority of responses online in 2020—a change from previous practice. Each county in the San Joaquin Valley has some census tracts with minimal residential high-speed connectivity, with the lowest access outside cities. While people in these areas may have internet access through smartphones or public libraries, in general they may have more trouble accessing the census online.

We hope these maps serve as a starting point to help local, regional, and state leaders think about which activities, resources, and partnerships—including language assistance, awareness raising, and community outreach—might be most effective for accurately counting different parts of California. Stay tuned for future posts that examine hard-to-count communities in other regions of the state.

Connecting Water Systems for Safe Drinking Water

Although most Californians have safe drinking water supplies, pockets of unsafe or inadequate water remain in parts of the state. Persistent water quality challenges mostly affect smaller, economically disadvantaged rural communities. About 90% of the affected water systems distribute water to fewer than 3,300 people each; most are very small, serving fewer than 500 people. Some small communities also face water shortages because their wells went dry during the latest drought. Solutions are financially out of reach for many poor communities, which lack resources and economies of scale to pay for expensive new treatment and supply facilities.

However, the state is actively encouraging one solution: the consolidation of smaller systems into larger ones. Consolidation can occur physically, by extending service connections to these communities, or administratively, by sharing managerial resources. Both approaches can improve the reliability and quality of water in a cost-effective, long-term manner. A 2015 law gives the State Water Board authority to mandate mergers if necessary. There have been 11 mandatory consolidations since then and more are pending. Voluntary consolidations are also on the rise: since the beginning of 2017, there have been 72 mergers.

Although consolidations can reduce costs over the long run, they entail some up-front expenses. Financial assistance is available in the form of state bonds, revolving funds, and some federal programs. Proposed legislation would create a new source of funding (from a voluntary donation on water bills and fees on agricultural chemicals) that would also provide resources. Several state bonds approved over the past decade dedicate funds for this purpose, and Proposition 3 on this November’s ballot would allocate an additional $500 million for infrastructure improvements that ensure access to safe drinking water.

To receive state funding, a water system that plans to extend safe water to a disadvantaged community typically applies for grants that support planning and construction costs as well as technical assistance. The Drinking Water State Revolving Fund (DWSRF) has supported a number of successful consolidation projects, such as one in Sutter County, where four water systems—including an elementary school—had ongoing arsenic and nitrate violations. DWSRF grants, in addition to funds from Yuba City, were used to finance the connection to Yuba City’s public water system, giving 995 people access to clean and reliable drinking water.

Getting grants can be challenging. The application for planning and construction is a complex, multi-year process, and many small, disadvantaged communities lack the capacity to navigate the application process. The State Water Board, along with some local organizations and programs, are helping affected communities with this process. The State Water Board also offers financial incentives to larger water systems that voluntarily consolidate with these communities, but additional support may be needed to encourage more widespread participation in consolidation programs.

While there are sources to finance capital improvements, other important needs are currently overlooked, including support for operation and maintenance costs, protections against unaffordable water rates, and legal services for consolidation.

Drinking water vulnerabilities in disadvantaged rural communities could worsen with climate change, and more can be done to encourage and streamline the consolidation process. There is growing awareness and action around providing safe and reliable drinking water to all Californians. With dependable funding and a clear state-level action plan, this goal could be achieved in the near term.

Video: A Conversation with Congressman Kevin McCarthy

As part of our Speaker Series on California’s Future, PPIC is inviting elected leaders across the political spectrum to participate in public conversations. The purpose is to give Californians a better understanding of how our leaders are addressing the challenges facing our state.

House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy and PPIC president Mark Baldassare had a wide-ranging conversation in Sacramento last week. They focused on the relationship between California and the federal government in several areas, including tax reform, immigration, health care, water policy, wildfire management, and fuel emissions standards.

When asked about the impact of the recently passed federal tax law on Californians, he emphasized the bigger economic picture. The focus, he said, should be on the overall Republican agenda and whether it inspires optimism about the future: “Do you feel better off? How many quarters of economic growth have you had?”

McCarthy criticized the state’s leadership for its “backwards thinking” on the gas tax and other issues, and its oppositional stance to the Trump administration. He also talked about the need for bipartisan compromise in Congress. “I try to work with everybody,” he said, citing the work he did with Senator Feinstein to pass “the first major piece of water legislation in quite some time.” He returned to this theme after the conversation was briefly interrupted by a pro-DACA demonstration, asking why we can’t “sit down and communicate with one another” and decrying “elected officials who stand up and say ‘Divide us, not unite us’.”

Nonetheless, he seemed confident about finding ways to address major issues. About immigration policy, he said “I think we’re going to solve this problem” in the next congressional session. Asked about the 2020 Census, he said that Congress is making sure there will be an accurate count. “It is a big job,” he added, “and this is always the big fear before a census—are we prepared for it?”

Finally, when asked why he wants to become Speaker of the House, he said, “I want to make sure a Republican can be Speaker,” so that the party can continue to enact its agenda. He went on to describe the electoral landscape leading up to the November midterms, offering up a key takeaway: “This will be the year of the woman.”

Managing Forests to Reduce Wildfire Risks

California’s record-breaking fires have prompted a serious public discussion on how to reduce the risk of extreme wildfires. At the core of the debate is the role of vegetation management to reduce fuels. Some argue that California is not doing enough to manage its forests and that more trees must be removed. Others are concerned that this approach could result in a weakening of important environmental protections.

Both perspectives are grounded in real concerns. That said, Californians need to find common ground, because the state is in the grip of a crisis fueled by a warming climate, drought, and decades of management practices that have resulted in extensive areas of unhealthy, overly dense forests. Identifying overlapping objectives can help move stakeholders beyond conflict toward ecologically sound forest management. Here are a few observations that might help advance the conversation.

  • There are no one-size-fits-all solutions. Devastating wildfires have occurred recently in oak woodlands, scrub and chaparral, and mixed-conifer forest. Fuel reduction tools like prescribed burning and mechanical thinning may reduce wildfire threats in some ecosystems but not others, depending in part on land use practices and the frequency of fire before and after people began changing the landscape. Improving public understanding about the applicability of each approach can help move the debate forward.
  • Where fuel reduction is a viable tool, we aren’t doing enough. It has been estimated that fuel reduction on US Forest Service (USFS) lands in the Sierra Nevada would need to increase two- to six-fold to meaningfully improve forest resilience. Cal Fire (the state’s fire protection and forest management department) and USFS have both pledged to dramatically increase the amount of fuel reduction over the next few years. First priority should be given to locations where all parties can agree on management actions.
  • Mechanical thinning and logging serve different purposes. Both approaches can reduce fire risk in the Sierra’s mixed-conifer forests, and both usually require heavy equipment, access roads, and expertise in forest dynamics. But they are different in intent and design. Mechanical thinning is a forest management tool for selectively reducing forest vegetation—including small trees, shrubs, and groundcover―that can fuel dangerous fires. It is designed to retain large fire-resistant trees and to create a mosaic of trees and openings as was once common. By contrast, most commercial logging operations are more like crop farming: they aim to harvest enough trees to maximize net returns while stewarding the land for future harvests. These approaches leave very different looking forests. The costs and benefits of each approach should be at the center of discussions about which to use where.
  • Expanding forest management doesn’t require dropping environmental protections. State and federal laws require evaluations of the impact of proposed forest management projects on air, water, and sensitive species. These projects can be accomplished under current rules, but it costs time and money. Dedicating additional federal resources to environmental compliance will enable an increase in the pace of management in national forests. Small private forest owners need help negotiating the permitting process.

California’s pioneering efforts to address climate change won’t solve the wildfire problems we face today. Forest management can have an immediate impact, and it can be implemented under existing environmental laws. Defining a common set of long-term objectives and working together to increase trust and transparency can help stakeholders and forest managers move past conflict to reconciliation on this critical issue.

Voters Favor New Water Bond. What Are They Missing?

One of the most surprising findings in the July PPIC survey is the strong support for an $8.9 billion state water bond among California likely voters (58%). Support for the bond―Proposition 3 on the November ballot―comes close on the heels of California voters passing a $4.1 billion state water and parks bond in June. What’s going on?

Majorities of California likely voters across partisan and demographic groups and the state’s regions say that water supply is a big problem in their part of California. Water supply and drought were the number one environmental problem named by likely voters in the survey (24%). Since Governor Brown took office in 2011, water supply and drought have been among the top environmental issues named by likely voters, and since 2014, together they have been named the most important environmental issue facing the state.

Majorities of likely voters across demographic groups and regions―including most Democrats (72%), nearly half of independents (48%), and four in ten Republicans (43%) and self-described conservatives (46%)―support Proposition 3.

PPIC surveys in the past five years show that support for state water bonds has remained high since the severe drought of 2012–16; voters are anxious about its return in light of other signs of climate change. Since 2014, at least half of California likely voters have said they would vote yes on various state water bonds. Moreover, an earlier PPIC survey found that most likely voters prefer bonds (44%) over fees (25%) and taxes (13%) as the means to fund water infrastructure projects.

What are the voters missing?

State bonds are important, but they actually play a relatively minor role in funding California’s water. Bonds provide at most $1 billion of the more than $30 billion in annual water-related spending. Local revenue—from water and sewer bills to taxes—provides the lion’s share. In addition, bonds are not a reliable long-term funding source, and they generally don’t cover operating and maintenance costs. State bonds don’t directly raise fees or taxes—which may make them more popular with voters than these alternatives. But they are not free. Every year bonds are repaid with significant interest from the state General Fund, which can reduce funding available for other important budget areas, such as education and health and human services.

California faces critical water funding gaps—totaling about $2–$3 billion annually—across several essential areas: safe drinking water in small, disadvantaged communities; flood protection; control of stormwater and other polluted runoff; and management of freshwater ecosystems and headwater forests. Limited financial capacity of low-income communities, legal constraints on local funding, a shrinking federal contribution, and unreliable state support contribute to the shortfall. There have been efforts to fill the gaps in other ways—especially for safe drinking water—but new sources of funding such as a surcharge on water bills haven’t enjoyed the same broad support as state bonds.

In California’s $2.7 trillion economy, filling the gaps for water’s “fiscal orphans” should be manageable. But this will require a focused effort and leadership at all levels. Bonds can help, but they can’t do it alone. Looking beyond bonds to find more durable ways to pay for essential water services—including with new fees and taxes―must be a top priority going forward.

Four Ways to Foster Cooperation over Groundwater

Last summer, some 250 local groundwater sustainability agencies (GSAs) were formed―the first step in meeting the requirements of California’s historic Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA).  Now these agencies face the difficult task of developing and implementing plans to bring their groundwater basins into balance over the next 20 years.

A recent event by the Groundwater Resources Association of California explored groundwater governance, and laid out ways that locals will need to cooperate to manage groundwater for long-term sustainability. Here are four key takeaways.

Coordination within GSA boundaries: GSAs must have strong internal cooperation to be effective. Many GSAs are composed of multiple public agencies (water districts, cities, and counties). Those agencies have to set up a new governance structure—agreeing on how to make joint decisions, and deciding how to split up the costs of management. And all GSAs must seek to involve a broad spectrum of stakeholders in the sustainability planning process—for example, domestic well users in disadvantaged communities, who have historically been left out of water planning processes.

Coordination within basins: Equally important will be collaboration across GSAs within the same basin. SGMA authorized the creation of more than one GSA per basin—and most of the larger basins have multiple GSAs (see map). But SGMA requires them to work together—either to develop a single sustainability plan, or to ensure consistency if there is more than one plan. GSAs will have to make sure that they speak a common language—including common metrics for their groundwater budgets and indicators of sustainability.

Coordination across basins: GSAs will need to collaborate across basins as well. GSAs in adjacent basins should be able to understand how their plans work regionally, and how their management actions affect their neighbors. This is important hydrologically—because groundwater often moves across the basin boundaries established by SGMA. But it is also important for developing projects and actions to attain sustainability.  For instance, one of the most promising ways to augment supplies in depleted basins is by capturing high flow water and recharging it into aquifers. In the San Joaquin Valley, conveying that water to the best recharge locations could generate benefits for multiple basins—but this can’t happen without regional cooperation.

Coordination with counties: Both within and across basins, GSAs will also need to involve relevant agencies that may not be part of the GSA. In particular, county officials have responsibilities and policy instruments that can help in groundwater management. For example, Stanislaus County—which overlies four basins—used its authority to adopt a well moratorium that limits unmanaged expansion of groundwater use. Kern County’s land use planning office implemented a new land use management plan—including updated zoning—to help the community of Indian Wells Valley reduce water use to bring its groundwater resources into balance.

SGMA gives local agencies and water users tremendous responsibility and unique opportunities to manage shared groundwater resources for the long term. It will take time to get the groundwater governance right. Developing strong lines of cooperation early in the planning process will set GSAs up for success.

How Wildfires Affect California’s Water Supply

Summer marks the traditional beginning of California’s fire season, although the warming climate has stretched the season considerably. Until the winter rains arrive, wildfires will burn forests and grasslands throughout the state. Since January 1, about 3,700 fires have consumed more than 111,000 acres of land—outpacing 2017, the most destructive and deadly fire season in state history.

While public safety and economic costs deserve and receive a great deal of attention, wildfires also have consequences for the management of water—including the amount and quality of supply, and the potential for flooding.

Fire can bring short-term water supply benefits by increasing runoff for downstream use. Most precipitation that falls on hillsides is captured by plants and soils and sent back into the atmosphere. By removing vegetation and reducing the ability of soils to hold water, most burns lead to an increase in runoff. The amount of increase depends on the type of vegetation that is burned. In Sierra conifer forests, reducing tree cover by about 40% may result in a 9% increase in water yield. Conversely, burning grasslands leads to negligible increases in water supply.

Managing forests with mechanical thinning and prescribed burning simulates the effects of low- and moderate-severity wildfire—creating opportunities to improve forest health while increasing water supply. But before concluding that forest fires and active management can reliably increase water supply, it’s worth noting that increases in water can be short-lived as vegetation rapidly grows back. And in drier forests like those of the southern Sierra Nevada, most downstream users are unlikely to see increased yields.

Wildfire can also bring some serious water management challenges.

Intense fires remove vegetation that prevents excessive erosion. Soils burned at high severity can also lose the ability to absorb water for a few years after a burn. When rain falls on these fire-ravaged slopes, the fast-moving runoff can erode soils and ash, transporting them into rivers. These flows threaten drinking-water quality and fill water supply and hydropower reservoirs with sediment. Following a series of severe wildfires in the American River headwaters, Placer County Water Agency experienced significant damage to its water supply and hydropower infrastructure, including costly impacts from increasing sediment and debris. The agency is now working with multiple partners to reduce wildfire risk above two reservoirs using prescribed burning and mechanical thinning.

The damaged soils and loss of vegetation following a severe burn can also increase the threat of downstream flooding and landslides. In some cases, these slides can become “debris flows”—fast-moving rivers of mud, rock, and other materials that can take out everything in their path. These are one of the most dangerous types of flash floods in California. The most recent and deadly example of this was in Montecito following the December 2017 Thomas Fire (the largest fire by area in state history). In early January 2018, record-high rainfall fell on the fire-scarred slopes above Montecito. The resulting debris flows killed 23 people and damaged or destroyed 400 homes.

Experts are predicting another year of intense wildfire activity. Water managers in affected regions will need to address the impacts of fire on local water supply and flood hazards, and must also account for such impacts in future planning.

Remaking Flood Management to Support Salmon

California’s aquatic ecosystems and the species that depend on them are in trouble. Dramatic changes in water and land use over the past 150 years have transformed the state’s freshwater landscape, and the latest drought brought additional stress. We talked with Lewis Bair, general manager of Reclamation District No. 108, about where we need to go from here.

PPIC: What needs to change to reverse the crisis in the state’s aquatic ecosystems?

Lewis Bair: California’s water infrastructure was designed to manage floods and provide water for crops, and when it was built we didn’t really understand how this system might affect fish and other species. Now we know that the state’s flood management system cuts off rivers from their floodplains, which provide important habitat for aquatic creatures. We’re starving our ecosystem. We’ve removed 90% of the floodplains and lost 80% of the fish.

There used to be 25 salmon canneries on the Sacramento River. Between 1910 and 1930 the canneries lost 80% of their harvest. California hadn’t yet built its big reservoirs when this happened, but we had completely separated rivers from their floodplains, which were the main source of food for the fish. There are plenty of challenges for struggling species in California, but the floodplain issue is one we haven’t addressed and I think it could make a significant difference, especially for salmon.

Going forward, we need a fundamental change in our mindset, from the current focus on regulatory or mitigation approaches for habitat work to an emphasis on recovery. We need to get steady funding for recovery efforts and build the relationships required to be successful. That requires a lot of big changes—and also requires people to get out of their silos. We need better-coordinated science. And we need to review what we’ve learned and build on it.

PPIC: What does the condition of California’s salmon tell us about what is happening in aquatic ecosystems?

LB: Salmon are struggling, and it’s not a surprise. But there are things we can do to help. I’ve been fortunate enough to work on projects to restore parts of the floodplain to help salmon in the Sacramento Valley. There’s no question that floodplain restoration is the most important thing we can do for salmon right now. Our current flood management system tries to drain land quickly, but salmon and other creatures need the water to say in place awhile. The natural floodplain used to spread flood waters over a few weeks. Now the water comes and goes in just a few days. We’re working on a project that spreads water out and allows “fish food” to grow. You need 3‒4 weeks for that process to be really productive.

These floodplain efforts take place during winter, an off season for farming, which makes it a complementary practice to farming. The fish are essentially a third crop for these lands—rice is grown in summer, and the flooded rice fields support waterfowl in fall and winter.

PPIC: What’s needed to take recovery to the next level?

LB: We’re working with some environmental NGOs now to draft ideas on how to modernize the state’s water infrastructure to improve water for ecosystems. I truly believe that we have broad agreement on at least 90% of what is needed for our environment. Instead of arguing about the 10% where we don’t agree, we need to get the 90% done. The state may need something like a resources department with the authority and vision to oversee multiple agencies. The governor’s EcoRestore program for the Delta is one model for providing that leadership. Success will depend on having the locals and NGOs in key roles on the ground.

I’m very excited about the direction things are going right now. We have great NGO partners wanting to get past the perception that water users are the bad guys―now it’s all about how to move forward as partners.

Watch a panel discussion on partnerships for healthy ecosystems (with Lewis Bair)