The Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta is undergoing continual and often rapid change. This poses challenges in predicting and preparing for the future, as past data and models are no longer sufficient to anticipate future conditions. This uncertainty cannot be addressed by collecting more data, and decision-making becomes complex when stakeholders have differing views on the consequences of actions. To effectively manage the Delta, managers need new methods for anticipating the future.
The Delta Independent Science Board is conducting a review of the Decision Making Under Deep Uncertainty, an interdisciplinary approach that provides decision-makers with new tools and processes to make better-informed decisions despite the challenges they face. Previous seminars have included an introduction to deep uncertainty, tools for making decisions under uncertainty, and cognitive biases.
One of the tools the Board has been focusing on is scenarios. In this fourth seminar in the series, Dr. Brett Milligan, an associate professor at the Department of Human Ecology at UC Davis, presented scenario development methods specific to the Delta region, drawing on the Franks Tract Futures project as an example, which focused on climate change adaptation and how to manage increasing salinity in the Delta.
Scenario planning in a post-normal paradigm
Scenario planning involves many theories and practices, with different ways of doing it. Dr. Brett Milligan said his work falls within a ‘post-normal’ science paradigm, a framework for applying science to issues where facts are uncertain, values are disputed, stakes are high, and decisions are urgent.
“A central tenet of post-normal science is that it speaks to the fact that there are multiple legitimate truths in any kind of situation,” he said. “It’s sort of a pluralistic way of looking at the world and of situating knowledge, and how do we work from that point of view.”
Post-normal science usually is a more inclusive process of coproduction; it’s less science “for” but science “with.” Peer reviews are expanded to include all who are involved or may be impacted by planning or science outcomes to help define the relevant questions that matter to the broader public.
Dr. Milligan pursues this through participatory scenario planning, which is generally a structured method for envisioning and assessing multiple possible futures. “The participatory part is really about who is included in these processes. That is an area of expanding research in scenario planning of how and when are different people included in a process, and how that influences outcomes and the process itself.”
“I see scenario planning has a collaborative and integrative creative process for co-learning,” he continued. “So I am as interested in the process of doing scenario planning as I am in the outcomes, in terms of the social side of that and potential building of capacity through shared knowledge.”
Frank’s Tract Futures
Before the 1900s, Franks Tract was marshes and wetlands. It was reclaimed in the early 1900s and stayed so into the late 30s when folks just gave up after a series of levee breaches and walked away. However, the land had subsided, and it was now a shallow lake between four and seven feet deep.
Nobody really knew what to do with it. It became a Navy bombing target in the 1950s and eventually a State Park in 1959, which it still is to this day. The park is only accessible by water and is used for fishing, hunting, and boating.
Bethel Island is an urbanized community adjacent to Franks Tract. The strips of land in the pictures are remnants of the levees that now protect the docks and marinas behind them. There are over a hundred professional bass tournaments a year, and there are blinds for hunting waterfowl; it is a highly prized recreational landscape.
But for the Department of Resources, it’s a problem. The graph on the slide is a hydrodynamic model showing how salinity pushes into Franks Tract from the tides coming from the Bay, and once the saline waters enter the tract, they tend to stay there and even increase. The saltier waters can potentially be drawn towards the export pumps, making the water unsuitable for human use.
So in 2017, they partnered with State Parks and the Department of Fish and Wildlife and came up with a potential solution: to create an earthen plug to stop the saltier water from coming into Franks Tract and to create about 1000 acres of wetlands. The modeling showed that it might do quite well. However, the project was developed without any stakeholder input.
“The boating community here really uses the open water and highly values it, and the proposal would basically just fill it all in and probably would have put all the marinas out of business,” said Dr. Milligan. “The local community was uniformly opposed to this solution because they felt it would really wreck things for them, and they hadn’t been consulted.”
The Franks Tract Futures Project
So, a new planning process was initiated that would this time include a robust public process. The Franks Tract Futures Project began with a survey about possible solutions to the problem. There were about 450 respondents. The dominant response was to not change anything; however, some realized that things were changing, and if nothing was done, the area would change in ways that would hurt many residents.
“We started to build a different baseline of what the landscape is and built that around what users thought of it,” said Dr. Milligan. “It was a geospatial survey you could take on your phone or computer to show your regular boating routes, and then throughout the tract, you can see where people go. We asked where marsh could potentially be located that wouldn’t bother them. We asked for a lot of demographic information. We asked where they recreate and what kind of things they did. We asked where they launched their boat and where public access is needed. There was a wide diversity spread across the entire tract.”
“One of the most important questions we asked them is, what are the areas that most need improvement? If you remember, at first, people said they didn’t want anything to change. But once the question was repositioned to what could be done that might improve it, we got a lot of responses, such as people not liking all of the aquatic weeds, or people worried about some of the boating hazards such as submerged old levees. There were many things that people said they wanted – restore beaches that had eroded away and more levee protection. So this became an opening to thinking about the future in a different way.”
So the goals for the project were reworked to include maintaining and enhancing recreation, supporting navigation, and trying to help the local economy rather than kill it. “This was originally a Delta smelt research project, and there was a lot of pushback about that, as well as other species, such as sportfishes and birds,” he said. “So it was a more synthetic notion of the ecology of the place, and how to benefit multiple species, along with the water quality and salinity prevention, which was a real need for the state.”
What followed was a year-and-a-half-long series of workshops that would bring together the agencies and stakeholders to look at different scenarios. Initially, there were six scenarios and a no-action alternative. They asked folks to select which one seemed most promising to them.
“Three scenarios plus the no-action alternative were what we carried forward, and we worked to refine each scenario, as we went through, according to all these different parameters,” said Dr. Milligan. “We had our ecology experts, recreational consultants, the fish biology people, and hydro modeling engineering folks to test all of these scenarios, along with the residents and users.”
He said there was a lot of rigor in how these took shape according to parameters and trying to meet all of them. Where could you combine landforms that wouldn’t impact boating? Where could you put beaches that, based on wind directions, are useful to the community? Where might you try to locate riparian habitat for fish? The different parameters were used to mold the landforms with each iteration, which were then tested through physical science parameters.
Dr. Milligan said the most productive work was through face-to-face interaction and getting feedback on what worked and didn’t work. One of the more poignant moments was when the lead hydrodynamic modeler from DWR, Eli Ateljevich, explained his modeling results to the community.
“So Eli had to figure out how to explain this really complex modeling to the community,” he said. “The community would have questions and had some ground truthing for some of the assumptions in the modeling. So, I think both sides were learning from this, and over time, the group built some advanced collective intelligence from these meetings. It was the people involved that made this project happen.”
The steering committee was comprised of the agencies who would be responsible for making the project go forward should a design come about. There was also an advisory committee consisting of folks who could be impacted or could benefit from the project, including marina operators, the local reclamation district, and sportfishing interests. The recreational components were important to get the community’s buy-in; otherwise, they would be negatively impacted. Aesthetics were also important; folks thought it would be a giant mud flat, so we asked them what an attractive landscape is and what is acceptable.
“We ended up with the no-action scenario and three designs that met the project goals that the state was looking for in terms of ecology and salinity attenuation, as well as meeting local interests,” said Dr. Milligan.
So the idea was to take all of these to a public meeting, and then the COVID lockdown hit, and everything had to be moved to an online format. So, they held a webinar and launched another geospatial survey where folks could review each design and add their likes, dislikes, and questions.
The preferred design scenario was the one that had the mass in the middle that splits the tract. “The community liked this because it kept the open water in front of their community while creating this second sheltered recreational pool of water on the other side,” he said. “It also had the least impact on boating through the tract.”
However, the most important outcome was how far folks came from the starting point when everyone said, ‘Don’t do anything.’ “In the end, most people voted for one of the three designs; a much smaller portion wanted to keep it as it was. So there was an actual shift, an actual change, and a willingness to perhaps think about adapting and doing something about some of these needs.”
The group collectively developed seven project objectives as well as qualitative and quantitative ways of assessing performance. One example was channel size: the community wanted wide channels for boating, but if they were too wide, the salinity benefit was lost. So they had to find the sweet spot, which turned out to be a 100-meter-wide channel, which gives enough room for boaters to get through while still getting the salinity benefit. “We got really lucky,” he said. “The one with the landmass in the middle worked the best in terms of salinity attenuation, and it was also the preferred one for the community. That was totally luck.”
They assessed factors that impacted navigation, such as velocity and travel times. They considered recreation factors such as motorized or non-motorized boating, new diversified hunting opportunities, beaches, day-use areas, and tidal marsh channels with recreational value. They also assessed ecological value.
This slide analyzes the different parameters for the ecological benefits as the habitats are diversified through intervention. “This shows the depth we went to to measure how these things work,” said Mr. Milligan. “So that’s one example of a participatory scenario planning model sort of at a contained scale with a very kind of clear notion of what the normative or preferred goals for the project were.”
New Project: Just Transitions
Dr. Millligan is starting a new project that will consider the future options for managing salinity in the Delta. The work is part of a UC multi-campus grant called “Just Transitions in Large Socioecological Systems: Drought, Sea Level Rise and Salinity in the Delta.”
“I see this as a scaled-up broader participatory scenario planning project,” he said. “The stakeholders will drive what sort of things are looked at in trying to involve some of those who don’t normally have a voice in these things.”
With any scenario planning process, it’s important to consider the scale in space and time. “I showed the Frank’s track futures, which was at a very specific scale. But there are just so many ways that Delta has changed over time and the ways that we have changed it. So the scale at which you look at that determines what scenarios you run and what your expectations are.”
The Just Transitions project is at a much larger scale than the Franks Tract project. The diagram on the slide shows the proposed process. “We’re going to start with a very intensive stakeholder outreach and interviews to ask stakeholders what they think are the primary drivers of salinity intrusion. And what kind of scenarios would you like to see run? What kinds of techniques to prevent or attenuate salinity management would you like? And how do you think decision-making should happen around that?”
“From that, we will try to craft a first set of scenarios and then come back to all those stakeholders and have them vetted again,” he said. “We have a very diverse team of experts from ecologists to climate modelers, and all those that will vet these as we go across.”
“One piece of nomenclature from scenario planning that might be helpful is the difference between exploratory and normative scenarios,” said Dr. Milligan. “Normative scenarios are very much like Franks Tract, where you take the values we have now and project them into the future. We know we want to keep salinity at bay if we can; we want to improve these ecological habitats; and we know we want these communities to do better than they might otherwise. So it’s taking those values and thinking about what kind of futures you might make.”
“Exploratory scenarios are a little more about what might happen without the normative aspect,” continued Dr. Miligan. “We mostly have gotten used to these in terms of climate change predictions or forecasts of what could happen. With this project, we’ll be going back and forth between both, of really taking in the science and the climate change predictions and trying to test them against a set of normative scenarios of what stakeholders might want to see in the future.”
The Just Transitions project will be much broader than the Franks Tract Project. It will include nature-based solutions, temporary salinity barriers, operable salinity gates, conveyance infrastructure, and regulatory or policy changes such as water rights reform, indigenous sovereignty, demand export reduction, and any new ideas that might come from robust outreach and engagement.
“This effort will be built off of trying to get a representation across a wide range of stakeholders and to have them think what the priorities might be of what to test to try to inform future decision making or what might be possible and what are the different impacts to different stakeholders based on different scenarios that might play out and to open that decision space.”
QUESTIONS & ANSWERS
Dr. Thomas Holzer asked about the Delta Conveyance Project. “It seems to me that it almost drives everything because the salinity problem becomes a very different problem with the conveyance structure, whatever format it takes. Am I right in assuming the conveyance structure becomes really important?”
“I think it’s a very valuable scenario to play out for what we might learn from it, knowing that we’re not promoting it, we’re not saying it might happen, but to explore what are the implications if the state were to build the tunnel,” said Dr. Milligan. “It would be a huge investment, so what are the implications? Who does it impact? For us, that would only be just one scenario that would provide us with some information about how that compares to other scenarios or things that would happen. … That’s where I think the value of exploring a wide range of possible scenarios is because you can start to see what one implies versus maybe a different one.”
Dr. Lisa Wainger asked, regarding the grid of outcomes that comes out of the structured decision-making process, did the stakeholders have questions about your confidence in those outcomes? How did you handle the variability of outcomes with the modeling? Did you try to represent that?
“The amount of indeterminacy varied by the variable,” said Dr. Milligan. “The recreational [aspects] were easy to quantify; if you’re creating these beaches or open pools, we got clear feedback of what was an added value from the community. However, some of the modeling, such as the uncertainty of what rate of sea level rise is going to happen, and there’s the bigger question of how long Frank’s Tract could be viable, depending on how much sea level rise. This leads to other questions, such as how long they will live if you build wetlands. Nobody knows. It all depends on the rates of which that happens, how much action we take to curb emissions, and things like that.”
“We were open about it when we didn’t know, saying this is what is known, this is what’s not known,” continued Dr. Milligan. “I think everybody was slightly uncomfortable with the knowability of what comes. … People were more interested in what would happen for the next 10 or 15 years. So that was where some of that focus went.”
Dr. Diane McKnight asked to what extent participation was motivated by a sense that the project could actually happen. “It’s my impression at the larger scale in the Delta, there’s been lots of talk over decades about what to do. And there may be some sense of a larger scale inertia that there is talk, but nothing will happen.”
“We went from a place of conflict and having no agreement on what to do to spending a year and a half, with a lot of people investing a lot of time, and we actually came up with something that everybody was excited about. And it’s three years later, and nothing is happening. … The Delta is full of these projects that sometimes take 34 years to happen … conveyance hasn’t happened in 50 years. I guess that’s part of the indeterminacy in the Delta, and it’s very hard to know which projects will actually go forward … It’s an extremely expensive project. Part of it is how that would be creatively funded across different agencies, and that’s another level of adaptation that needs to happen. How these projects get funded, especially when it’s mutual benefit across a wide range of agencies – we’re not built that way. So, I get what you’re saying; I feel the same way. Many projects get worked on, but even if they prove to be supported and viable, you still don’t know what’s going to happen.”
Dr. Tanya Heikkila asked to what level costs are considered in these discussions in developing scenarios. “Not just the costs of actually doing them over a reasonable period of time, but also the long-term maintenance costs, once the habitat or the landscape is sculpted in the way that folks would like to see it. Real costs are associated with that, both monetary and social costs. So was it even discussed, or at what level was it considered?”
Dr. Milligan said it was a big concern, especially for the parks agencies and the community. “This was a first pass. It was a feasibility study to see if this was possible. Then, the idea was that there would be more follow-up, an EIR, planning, and things that would happen. So it was an important concern for what kind of maintenance would happen, particularly for some of the recreational features, and making sure there would be a budget for them – all of that was a consideration. It was in some ways moved into if this is going to go towards implementation, then there would be subsequent steps that would flesh that out in more detail, but it was definitely a strong concern from the agencies and stakeholders.
Dr. Virginia Dale asked if they asked people for details about the things they would care about. For example, there are a lot of aspects to recreation, and they all have different costs and benefits. Did you ask about what they value in terms of the attributes of the system?
Dr. Milligan said they did ask people what they wanted, and there were differing answers. For example, there were those who wanted open water, but they wanted it to be actual open water because, right now, it’s full of weeds, and it’s hard to boat across. But others thought that was prime bass habitat and didn’t want it cleaned out. So there were sometimes different ideas of what people wanted.
“When we started, it really was a feasibility study, and we didn’t know if those community demands could still make the salinity prevention and all of that work. So, in some ways, it was just testing to see if it was possible. There was a general idea of what the cost would be, and I think it’s probably a little bit more than what was hoped for … We did ask them, what do you see as the future you want? Or what are the things that are important to you? Most folks I talked to did not want salinity to happen either; they didn’t like seeing the sharks. They didn’t want it to be prevented using the method that it would be. There were just hours of information about the different things people wanted, and then we did interviews to look for commonalities and things that people were saying, and then made different scenarios to respond to those things.”
A public member asked what he learned through this process that he would carry forward to improve these kinds of processes in the future?
“My general takeaway is actually really simple.” Said Dr. Milligan. “It is about people just getting in the same room. It’s the interpersonal exchange and workshops and things … I feel like those were always when the big news happened, or some surprising outcome would come about with people having eaten lunch together over it. You have folks who are hugely at odds with each other in their roles, but something else happens when they are in an informal environment. So a lot of that is just trying to craft some of those situations where people can have that kind of communication. It’s incredibly simple as a takeaway.”
