By Jennifer Pierre, General Manager of the State Water Contractors
California’s climate is changing faster than our infrastructure can keep up. In the past five years, we’ve seen atmospheric rivers cause catastrophic flooding, prolonged drought has devastated agricultural communities and perpetuated a lack of access to safe drinking water, and inconsistent snowpack makes it difficult for water managers to plan for the future.
This is our new norm. Yet, much of California’s water infrastructure was built for a climate reality that no longer exists. Right now, our lack of urgency is a massive gamble with a water system that is foundational to California’s position as the 4th largest economy in the world — and the odds are against us if we don’t act now.
To meet our new climate realities, we need to flex a muscle that seems to have atrophied in California. We need to build — a lot — and take creative and decisive action to address our water supply challenges in new ways and on an unprecedented scale. This means investing in and prioritizing water infrastructure like the Delta Conveyance Project (DCP), updating and utilizing current regulations to ensure water managers have operational flexibility to adapt to an unpredictable climate, and implementing modern, science-driven regulatory updates like the Agreements to Support Healthy Rivers and Landscapes.
The DCP is critical to modernizing the State Water Project. It’s also overwhelmingly popular. In 2023, a statewide poll found that 76% of voters, regardless of region or party, supported the DCP as a way to secure water supply for California’s future.
Because the DCP is a modern project, its design considers the climate challenges we face today. The DCP would allow for more operational flexibility, allowing water managers to balance the protection of species and habitats with water supply demand and availability. It would also protect dwindling groundwater supplies by capturing, storing and moving affordable surface water to the regions that need it most.
Large, innovative projects like the DCP naturally take time to approve, plan and implement. Unfortunately, opponents have delayed progress on this project by taking every opportunity to object to routine, practical steps in the planning process.
The frivolous challenges are endless, and they fit a common trend in California where opponents can exploit our state’s byzantine legal and permitting processes to stall all kinds of projects and infrastructure that a changing world demands.
The DCP represents a necessary but long-term development to significantly shore up State Water Project supplies. In the near term, we also need to focus on how to best use our existing infrastructure and how to add more green infrastructure that works together to meet water supply and environmental needs. Regulations that add operational flexibility when it is environmentally safe to do so, as well as new frameworks like the Agreements to Support Healthy Rivers and Landscapes (Healthy Rivers and Landscapes), will provide an opportunity to address challenges facing water managers today.
The fact is, we can choose scarcity or abundance. Managed and stored properly, we can avoid every drought being an emergency while still protecting water quality, fish, recreation, farming and all of our other California values. Our water supply permits can and should do more to enable climate-responsive operations. Allowing maximum management flexibility gives water managers the tools to capture and deliver the water Californians need and protect wildlife in times of hydrological feast or famine.
In addition to utilizing current regulations to their fullest extent, an updated water quality control plan that implements Healthy Rivers and Landscapes would enable California to use the best available science to make data-driven decisions that protect the environment while maintaining necessary water supplies. It would also earmark substantial water resources specifically for the environment, giving them more flexible and predictable water management terms.
These agreements would be approved and overseen by the State Water Board to ensure the Bay-Delta Plan is implemented as intended. Healthy Rivers and Landscapes implementation is a crucial bridge to shore up current reliability while we build longer-term solutions like the DCP, while also providing meaningful benefits to the environment.
We need to be realistic about what the future looks like as the climate continues to change, and we experience more intense and frequent weather extremes. Maximizing operational flexibility and implementing both DCP and Healthy Rivers and Landscapes are solutions that provide for the near- and long-term health of our water supply system in the face of these challenges.
We also need to have long-deferred conversations about how we are going to pay for the climate resilience we know we need. Public water agencies cannot shoulder the burden of increased maintenance costs of existing systems, decreased revenues due to important water conservation, and new local and regional projects to bolster water portfolios. All of these actions are important, and public funding will be needed to implement the full suite of actions to ensure climate adaptation.
Iterative progress and tepid solutions are no longer good enough. California has long been a leader in climate resiliency and adaptation, and we cannot afford to take a step back now. We must act decisively to fortify our water infrastructure and its governing regulatory framework while we still have the flexibility to do so. Will we continue to lead, or will we bust? I’m betting on California.
Note: The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of Maven’s Notebook.
COMMENTARY: Costly, unnecessary infrastructure delays put California’s water supplies at risk
By Jennifer Pierre, General Manager of the State Water Contractors
This is our new norm. Yet, much of California’s water infrastructure was built for a climate reality that no longer exists. Right now, our lack of urgency is a massive gamble with a water system that is foundational to California’s position as the 4th largest economy in the world — and the odds are against us if we don’t act now.
To meet our new climate realities, we need to flex a muscle that seems to have atrophied in California. We need to build — a lot — and take creative and decisive action to address our water supply challenges in new ways and on an unprecedented scale. This means investing in and prioritizing water infrastructure like the Delta Conveyance Project (DCP), updating and utilizing current regulations to ensure water managers have operational flexibility to adapt to an unpredictable climate, and implementing modern, science-driven regulatory updates like the Agreements to Support Healthy Rivers and Landscapes.
The DCP is critical to modernizing the State Water Project. It’s also overwhelmingly popular. In 2023, a statewide poll found that 76% of voters, regardless of region or party, supported the DCP as a way to secure water supply for California’s future.
Because the DCP is a modern project, its design considers the climate challenges we face today. The DCP would allow for more operational flexibility, allowing water managers to balance the protection of species and habitats with water supply demand and availability. It would also protect dwindling groundwater supplies by capturing, storing and moving affordable surface water to the regions that need it most.
Large, innovative projects like the DCP naturally take time to approve, plan and implement. Unfortunately, opponents have delayed progress on this project by taking every opportunity to object to routine, practical steps in the planning process.
The frivolous challenges are endless, and they fit a common trend in California where opponents can exploit our state’s byzantine legal and permitting processes to stall all kinds of projects and infrastructure that a changing world demands.
The DCP represents a necessary but long-term development to significantly shore up State Water Project supplies. In the near term, we also need to focus on how to best use our existing infrastructure and how to add more green infrastructure that works together to meet water supply and environmental needs. Regulations that add operational flexibility when it is environmentally safe to do so, as well as new frameworks like the Agreements to Support Healthy Rivers and Landscapes (Healthy Rivers and Landscapes), will provide an opportunity to address challenges facing water managers today.
The fact is, we can choose scarcity or abundance. Managed and stored properly, we can avoid every drought being an emergency while still protecting water quality, fish, recreation, farming and all of our other California values. Our water supply permits can and should do more to enable climate-responsive operations. Allowing maximum management flexibility gives water managers the tools to capture and deliver the water Californians need and protect wildlife in times of hydrological feast or famine.
In addition to utilizing current regulations to their fullest extent, an updated water quality control plan that implements Healthy Rivers and Landscapes would enable California to use the best available science to make data-driven decisions that protect the environment while maintaining necessary water supplies. It would also earmark substantial water resources specifically for the environment, giving them more flexible and predictable water management terms.
These agreements would be approved and overseen by the State Water Board to ensure the Bay-Delta Plan is implemented as intended. Healthy Rivers and Landscapes implementation is a crucial bridge to shore up current reliability while we build longer-term solutions like the DCP, while also providing meaningful benefits to the environment.
We need to be realistic about what the future looks like as the climate continues to change, and we experience more intense and frequent weather extremes. Maximizing operational flexibility and implementing both DCP and Healthy Rivers and Landscapes are solutions that provide for the near- and long-term health of our water supply system in the face of these challenges.
We also need to have long-deferred conversations about how we are going to pay for the climate resilience we know we need. Public water agencies cannot shoulder the burden of increased maintenance costs of existing systems, decreased revenues due to important water conservation, and new local and regional projects to bolster water portfolios. All of these actions are important, and public funding will be needed to implement the full suite of actions to ensure climate adaptation.
Iterative progress and tepid solutions are no longer good enough. California has long been a leader in climate resiliency and adaptation, and we cannot afford to take a step back now. We must act decisively to fortify our water infrastructure and its governing regulatory framework while we still have the flexibility to do so. Will we continue to lead, or will we bust? I’m betting on California.
Note: The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of Maven’s Notebook.
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