THERE ONCE WAS A TIME when heavy snow in the Sierra Nevada meant California could rest assured. There would be enough water stored in the slowly melting snowpack to last through another summer, another fire season, another harvest.
In recent years, as temperatures have risen, Mother Nature’s storage system is failing. Snow turns to rain sooner and melts earlier. Flood waters pour past loaded reservoirs, leaving dry season dryer with no backup in the mountains.
Rising temperatures are central to the new climate reality faced by the California Department of Water Resources, and the agency is asking the public and stakeholders to provide input on the 2028 California Water Plan.
Every five years, the state updates its plan, which is a strategy for managing its existing water resources and developing new ones for the future. On Wednesday, the DWR hosted a webinar to share recent research and invite the public to provide input in upcoming meetings of the Water Commission and the California Water Plan Advisory Committee.
California experienced record warmth and an extremely dry March, leaving the statewide snowpack at just 18% of average despite near-average precipitation. Much of the precipitation fell as rain instead of snow, reducing the natural “storage” that normally melts through summer.
“It is hotter, and it is drier,” said Karla Nemeth, director of the California DWR. “Our major reservoirs were above average for this time, but our snowpack is dismal. It was also our driest March on record. What we have in our reservoirs is what we have to manage, really for the next six months or so until we hit October.”
New strategies for water storage
After the drought of 2021, the state Legislature set a new retention target.
“Scientists were telling us even a few years ago that by 2045 we’d have wet years and dry years, but we could expect an average reduction in water supply of upwards of 10%, like 9 million acre-feet,” said California Natural Resources Secretary Wade Crowfoot.
Nine million acre-feet became the Legislature’s planning target for new water sources and storage by 2040, Nemeth said, even though there is no evidence of a steep decline in precipitation.
“The atmosphere is just going to take more water,” she said.
“How does that snowpack get into our homes?” asked The Nature Conservancy’s Sandi Matsumoto, who also serves on the California Water Commission. “The answer is it really moves through our ecosystems.”
Forests and meadows store that water, as well as rivers and wetlands, which also move water from surface to recharge aquifers, where it is stored without evaporation, which is critically important, she said.
“In a dry year, 60% of our water comes from underneath the ground,” Matsumoto said. “It’s all we have when it’s not raining and when there’s no snow. Moving water into the ground is super important, and our rivers and wetlands do that naturally.”
Nemeth said the new water plan must consider the whole watershed, not just water districts, when considering how the landscape moves and stores water.
“We’re also bringing in individual watershed characteristics, meaning what’s the geology? Different geologies react differently to different rates of snowmelt,” she said.
Nature-based solutions include fallowing farmland to restore desert habitat, importing water from outside sources like the Colorado River and building ocean water desalination plants. Desalination is one of the most expensive options because it involves transporting it across great distances, according to Craig Miller, general manager of Western Municipal Water District, the agency that serves the Inland Empire.
“When you look at developing ocean desal and bring it into the Inland Empire, you’re talking about $8,500 per acre-foot water,” Miller said. “That’s replacing water that is $400 per acre-foot water that falls on this state from Mother Nature and is captured.”
The 2028 California Water Plan is a response to a request from state leaders for a comprehensive strategy that expands water storage, recycling, groundwater recharge and ecosystem restoration to help California adapt to increasingly extreme swings between drought and flood.
The first water plan advisory committee meeting will be held at the DoubleTree by Hilton Sacramento in Sacramento May 13 and 14. Water Commission meetings are listed at cwc.ca.gov/Meetings.
Suggestions for the water plan can be emailed directly to secretarysuggestions@resources.ca.gov
