Report reinforces immediate need for infrastructure investments, respond to changing climate
Press release from the State Water Contractors
Yesterday, the California Department of Water Resources (DWR) released the final 2023 State Water Project Delivery Capability Report (DCR). The report highlights the importance of the work being done by water managers to ensure the long-term reliability of the State Water Project—the backbone of California’s water infrastructure, serving 27 million Californians, 750,000 acres of farmland and countless businesses with high-quality, affordable water—amid current climate change conditions and future projections of even hotter, drier and more extreme weather.
Statement from Jennifer Pierre, General Manager of the State Water Contractors:
“DWR’s final Delivery Capability Report underscores what California’s water managers have known and have been planning for: ongoing shifts in hydrology in California will require newfound investments to ensure we can move and store water when it’s wet for use when it’s dry, for generations to come. The volume of water provided by the SWP cannot easily or affordably be replaced so it is imperative that as part of a suite of actions to shore up water
supply portfolios throughout the state, we modernize and upgrade the state’s main water delivery infrastructure and implement science-based regulations.
The report shows that SWP deliveries could drop by between 13%-23% in the next 20 years if no reinvestments in the SWP are made. A 23% drop in supply is a worst-case scenario, built for planning purposes on the assumption that we will do nothing to modernize, adapt, and upgrade our water infrastructure and regulatory structure. That’s good for planning, but thankfully not the case. Water managers are in fact proactively analyzing and developing adaptation
strategies—including the Delta Conveyance Project, Agreements to Support Healthy Rivers and Landscapes (Agreements), Forecast Informed Reservoir Operations (FIRO), and improved above- and below-ground storage opportunities—to ensure the projected supply reductions never become a reality for California.
While the outlined climate adaptation strategies are critical, needed and long overdue, we need to make sure we can afford their associated costs. Currently, contractors who rely on State Water Project supplies shoulder all the costs, including for public benefits such as flood control, electric grid reliability and significant costs to support important recreation facilities and opportunities throughout the state. Just as the State Water Contractors are prepared to ensure reinvestment in the State Water Project, so too, should the state and federal government, to ensure that all of the benefits continue to accrue to all Californians. The State Water Project’s service area would rank as the eighth largest economy in the world if it were its own nation, and the final DCR shows without question that we must invest in California’s water infrastructure for the millions of people and important farmland that relies on it for California’s continued prosperity.”
