Second series of workshops for the Just Transitions project to take place on June 7 and June 9
California is facing a growing challenge as climate change drives more extreme weather, leading to periods of either too little water or more than we can effectively manage. Rising sea levels push saltwater further inland, adding pressure to ecosystems already under strain. With agriculture, cities, and the environment all relying on California’s water, how can we prepare for these changes?
Two innovative projects are tackling these questions head-on. The Collaboratory for Equity in Water Allocations (COEQWAL) is developing tools and strategies to help communities adapt, while the Just Transitions project is analyzing the Delta’s salinity changes and exploring ways to respond. Led by a diverse team of experts from UC campuses, California State University Sacramento, and various partner organizations, these efforts bring together engineers, scientists, community groups, and policymakers to build solutions that are inclusive and forward-thinking. At the Delta Independent Science Board’s March meeting, Dr. Brett Milligan, Professor of Landscape Architecture and Environmental Design at UC Davis, shared an in-depth look at these initiatives.
COEQWAL
The COEQWAL project, led by UC Berkeley’s Ted Grantham and Dr. Brett Milligan, is working to address the challenges of unequal water access, climate change, and the complex water system in the state by creating easy-to-use online tools accessible to the public that will explore and understand water allocation scenarios.
Water policymakers have access to computer modeling tools that represent how water is allocated in California. These tools can be used to explore different water management scenarios, but until now, these tools have been largely inaccessible to most water users; COEQWAL is working to change that. Through a public website, COEQWAL will empower all Californians with the same tools and information water policymakers use. Using a collaborative modeling approach, COEQWAL will develop water management scenarios reflecting the values and priorities of diverse community members and are meaningful to the broadest possible audience.
The project aims to make California’s water planning more inclusive by involving a diverse range of people and highlighting the views and needs of communities historically excluded from water decisions. The project achieves this through focused outreach and by sharing the knowledge, data, and tools agencies and decision-makers rely on. Public workshops facilitate open, collaborative conversations that explore and shape California’s water’s future.
“California’s water infrastructure is quite complex, and the ways in which it is managed is also really hard to penetrate,” said Dr. Milligan. “It’s very complicated, so much of what this project is trying to do to sort of remove that black box and look at all the possibilities for the future.”
The project uses Cal Sim 3, a water allocation and planning tool for the Central Valley and interconnected basins developed by the Department of Water Resources and the Bureau of Reclamation. The team is reviewing how the model works and exploring ways to make water allocations more understandable and accessible to the public. This involves analyzing different operations, allocation scenarios, and potential climate futures to develop various water management strategies.
The project emphasizes collaboration with communities and experts to create a data platform that makes this information widely available. Unlike traditional assessments that look at a narrow set of scenarios, this effort intentionally broadens the scope to explore operational changes beyond “business as usual.”
“We’re trying to explore a wider range of what’s possible for what that might inform, whether that’s different climate models, different allocations of water, different regulations and changes in regulations,” said Dr. Milligan. “We’re really trying to offer this expanded field of what’s possible.”
The scenarios include
- A baseline scenario with and without the temporary urgency change petitions (TUCPs) that lead to differences in water quality requirements,
- A scenario focused on groundwater and how groundwater will influence allocations, particularly under the future of SGMA,
- A scenario focused on environmental flows, including functional flows, ecological flows, minimum flow requirements,
- A scenario that considers changes to Delta standards, such as a modified X2 or modified Delta outflow requirements, and
- A drinking water scenario.
While scenarios explore possibilities and uncertainties, case studies analyze real-world examples to discover insights or lessons. Three case studies included in the project will focus on drinking water, chinook salmon, and salinity in the Delta.
The project’s approach to future hydroclimates is consistent with the DWR’s State Water Project Delivery Capability Report. Future hydroclimate parameters, such as temperature, precipitation, flow, and sea level rise, represent different levels of risk and are defined as ‘Levels of Concern.’ The probability number describes the percent of model-informed climate outcomes that would result in better system performance; for example, a 50% level of concern means there is a 50% possibility it might be more than that and a 50% possibility it might be less. If you plan to a 95% level of concern, there’s probably only a 5% chance you’re not prepared for a more extreme situation.
Five hydroclimate futures with levels of concern ranging from moderate to high will be modeled for each scenario. The team will evaluate how water allocations, reservoir storage, and river flows might be altered for functional or environmental flows, Delta outflows, exports from the Delta, salmon populations, and diversions for agriculture and urban uses. They are also considering various ways of thinking about distributional equity in terms of existing justice frameworks.
The project team is working on a beta version of a user-friendly data platform with information organized around the thematic scenarios. This will allow users to look at how parameters, such as water allocations, could be changed or the effects of different climate predictions under different water allocations. The team is also considering creating various visualizations to make the information more accessible. The project is informed by an advisory group of about 50 folks representing state and federal government agencies, Native American tribes, community groups, water districts, and NGOs.
The COEQWAL project includes the UC Water Academy course offered to students across all campuses, focusing on California’s water systems, policy, and management.
The public website with accessible water planning tools is expected to be released by the end of 2025.
JUST TRANSITIONS
The Just Transitions project is also a multi-campus initiative funded separately from COEQWAL. One of the three use cases explored in the COEQWAL project will be the Just Transitions project.
Tides influence the Delta, which means saltwater from the San Francisco Bay naturally pushes in and out of the area twice a day. DWR and Reclamation release water from reservoirs upstream as needed to prevent too much saltwater from coming into the Delta, which would impact farming, local water users, and water supplies for export. This pushes back the saltwater, keeping the Delta’s water fresh and usable.
During droughts, freshwater flow from rivers and streams into the Delta is reduced, so more water needs to be released from upstream reservoirs to the Delta to keep the saltwater at bay. When salt intrudes into the Delta, it can impact wildlife and ecosystems and water quality for urban and agricultural users who rely on the Delta. If salinity control fails, it could take months or years to fix.
Managing salinity in the Delta is challenging because many groups are in charge and often disagree due to competing needs for resources. When droughts drag on and reservoirs run low, managing salinity gets harder as reservoir releases for salinity control in the Delta means less water for farms and cities. Solutions often include cutting exports, loosening salinity rules in some areas, and building emergency barriers, but these come with trade-offs for people and the environment.
With more droughts expected, better long-term planning is needed. Just Transitions explores potential future salinity management scenarios in the Delta watershed, emphasizing public participation to assess and balance the possible trade-offs of different adaptive strategies for water management under a shifting climate.
“Our project is really focused on salinity,” said Dr. Milligan. “But as you probably know, if you look at salinity, you’re looking at all kinds of things in the Delta because it’s so tied into this kind of wicked problem, and salinity has changed so much over time.”
To illustrate the changes, he presented a slide showing where the salinity line was between 1921 and 1943, and from 1944 to 1990, after the completion of Shasta Dam and other water diversion infrastructure.
“What you don’t see here is that many believe that the Delta prior to 1921 was more fresh because you didn’t even have some of these takeouts. But there’s even controversy here of exactly what is salinity and what should be managed in the Delta, which raises this question, what is a just future in the Delta? And what is a just future around salinity management?”
The term’ Just Transition’ is used in climate, energy, and environmental justice work and refers to efforts to reduce and rectify past and present inequities as society transforms towards more resilient and sustainable futures.
The Just Transitions project aims to make science and decision-making in the Delta more open and inclusive by focusing on the communities that might be affected and giving them a meaningful role in shaping the questions, methods, and results. The goal is to work together on planning processes that help the Delta adapt to a fast-changing future.
“By having a very public-facing engagement, can we build shared learning and vision about the future? Can we build trust? Is there a type of ‘co-learning’ that could happen around that? That is one of the primary questions of the project.”
Co-learning is done through envisioning both normative and exploratory scenarios. Normative scenarios are what we want to have happen, such as restoration or a certain amount of water for exports; exploratory scenarios are things such as what climate might be in 50 years, and using that as a source for strategic conversation, identifying embedding assumptions, and fostering collective learning.
“So our project goal overall is to try to democratize science and decision-making through this inclusive process of co-design and co-production by providing opportunities for all communities potentially affected by policy and planning to have a role in the project, and doing that by engaging in collaborative efforts to identify the questions, defining the methods and evaluating the results of planning processes.”
DEVELOPING THE SCENARIOS
The project began with about 50 interviews, some were in survey format from a mix of stakeholders, many of whom resided in the Delta and/or had a professional connection to the Delta. Tribal and environmental justice interests were also interviewed.
From that, six scenarios were developed and presented at the first public workshop in June of 2024:
- Business as usual: The baseline scenario from which all other scenarios can be compared. This will be evaluated with and without temporary urgency change petitions.
- Delta tunnel: A scenario with Delta Conveyance as a potential adaptation for comparison to other scenario adaptations. “This was definitely a surprise to us based on the fact that many people in the Delta are very opposed to the tunnel infrastructure, but a lot of people really wanted to see us model this so that they could see how it rated compared to these other scenarios.”
- Eco machine: This scenario will test the capacity of in-Delta tidal restoration to attenuate salinity and provide additional benefits, such as ecological, ecocultural, recreational, and community. How strategic location of restoration and nature-based solutions, such as Franks Tract futures or Suisun Marsh restoration would affect the movement of salty water.
- New green watershed: Similar to eco machine but much broader in scale. This scenario tests the capacity of upstream watershed restoration, tidal restoration, nontidal restoration, and regenerative land use. The scenario extends restoration strategies beyond the Delta, while also using tidal restoration modeling that will be performed for the Eco machine scenario.
- Calling on reserves: This tests the capacity of changes in reservoir operations and management, primarily the release and timing of flows. This would include using functional flows, environmental flows, carry-over storage, and the like, and considering how dams might be operated differently, including Forecast Informed Reservoir Operations (FIRO).
- Bolster and fortify: This scenario would use gray infrastructure, such as barriers, operable gates, and augmented levees to attenuate salinity intrusion.
The scenarios are then run through the models that simulate future climates, including a long-term drought and altered operations and regulations. Outcomes can then be compared across all scenarios.
At the June 2024 workshop, participants were asked to rank the scenarios in order of preference; the results are on the slide. New green watershed and Eco machine came in first and second; Delta tunnel was second to last.
“What is most interesting is business as usual was by far the least liked, which is a surprising result,” said Dr. Milligan. “We found that nobody found that business as usual is really working for them and wanting change, which I think is a bit remarkable.”
SECOND WORKSHOP TO TAKE PLACE JUNE 7 AND 9
The second in a series of workshops will take place on Saturday, June 7, and Monday, June 9, at the Jean Harvie Community Center in Walnut Grove. The workshops will present the refined scenarios with detailed metrics and modeled outputs. Research team members will be on hand to discuss and share their findings.
On Saturday, the scenarios and findings will be displayed in an open gallery with interactive products for participants to provide feedback and assessment of the future scenarios. The Monday workshop will include presentations, breakout sessions, and group discussions.
Click here to register: https://forms.gle/GcXD3D8Psk5nyM4PA
