California is more prepared for our water future than ever before

SACRAMENTO – Today, Governor Gavin Newsom spoke before members of the Association of California Water Agencies (ACWA), presenting a clear path forward to protect California’s water supplies and ensure the state can continue to deliver water for its nearly 40 million residents. The annual event brings together water agencies from across the state that manage local water systems for communities.

“California has embraced a more balanced and forward-looking approach to water policy — rejecting the false choice between protecting our water future and building the infrastructure we need. We’re taking an all-of-the-above approach by expanding water projects, restoring habitats, and improving water quality, because real progress comes from partnership, not polarization.”

The Governor’s remarks outlined actions by the administration to help ensure the state can continue delivering for Californians and laid out necessary steps for the state to maintain its course.  Together since 2019, California has worked with stakeholders to modernize and strengthen water systems, rebuild ecosystems and habitats, and prepare the state for a future with more intense droughts, storms, floods, and wildfires as a result of climate change.

Surviving climate whiplash

Climate change has created dramatic shifts in how the state must manage water. In the last 15 years alone, California has experienced two worst-in-a-millennium droughts, the driest three-year period in the state’s history, followed by the wettest three-week period ever. In California and states throughout the nation, the wets are getting wetter, the hots are getting hotter, and the droughts are getting drier.

Recognizing the impacts of this extreme climate volatility, Governor Newsom has pushed forward to prepare the state’s water systems for more climate whiplash by creating a comprehensive bottom-up strategy to maintain and diversify water supplies, protect and enhance natural ecosystems, and build stronger connections.

Strategies for a stronger water future 

Soon after taking office, Governor Newsom laid the groundwork for a stronger water future by releasing the 2020 Water Resilience Portfolio, recognizing that water policy must be developed collectively with state and local agencies, climate leaders, and industry — working together to advance their shared interests and sustain California’s water for generations to come.

Governor Newsom issued an executive order with broad and ambitious strategies, leading to 142 actions that will help sustain California’s water, create infrastructure, and protect California communities, including:

• Providing access to clean water by funding the Safe and Affordable Drinking Water Act which would help repair water systems and provide stronger access to clean drinking water throughout the state.
• Creating more water storage and recycling to take advantage of wetter years and help ensure the state could better weather long-term droughts
• Creating collaborative water management in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River systems and the Delta by executing voluntary agreements through the Healthy Rivers and Landscapes Program.
• Advancing the Delta Conveyance Project, including by modernizing the project from the previous “Twin Tunnels” project and hitting key milestones under the California Environmental Quality Act and Delta Reform Act.
• Improving public health by repairing environmental damage in the Salton Sea —  reducing cases of asthma and years of long-term environmental neglect.
• Restoring salmon, habitats, and tribal lands by removing dams from the Klamath River.
• Better use of data to make water management more efficient and effective.

Expanding access to clean water

California has long suffered from an inequity in its water systems, and in 2019, despite being the richest state in the nation, more than a million Californians were living in homes with contaminated drinking water.  It was a medical and a moral crisis. Governor Newsom has helped improve water quality for California residents who have a right to clean water free of pollution by:

• Helping 1 million Californians gain access to clean water, through the launch of the SAFER drinking water program and over $1.8 billion in grants provided to disadvantaged communities..
• Supporting Californians impacted by drought with investments to deepen wells, replace pipelines, and build storage tanks.
• Removing dangerous pollutants from water systems including lead, arsenic, and uranium.
• Consolidating and repairing failed water systems throughout the state with 180 water systems consolidated; and 300 returned to compliance.

Governor Newsom signed legislation to facilitate the consolidation of failing drinking water and sewer systems. The legislation was signed in East Orosi in Tulare County. Last month, the community broke ground on the East Orosi water system consolidation.

Adapting to climate extremes

As the most recent drought intensified in 2022, it became clear that the state needed a focused action plan to replace water supply lost by hotter dryer conditions in coming decades. Record-low runoff that year from dry soils and high spring temperatures underscored what the Department of Water Resources had concluded from scientific data and modeling: California could lose upwards of 10%  of its water supply, or six to nine million acre-feet of water on average each year by 2040 — if it didn’t properly adapt by better storing, managing, and transporting water supplies.  In 2022, the administration created the Water Supply Strategy to help  free up 500,000 acre-feet of water through more efficient water use and conservation, as well as;

• Create storage space for up to 4 million acre-feet of water, and capitalize on big storms
• Recycle and reuse at least 800,000 acre-feet of water per year by 2030.
• Safely use wastewater currently discharged to the ocean.
• Capture stormwater and desalinate ocean water and salty water in groundwater basins, diversifying supplies.

Groundwater: Restoring the water below us

Groundwater provides 41% of the state’s total water supply – 60% in dry years. But when it is used, it must be provided with time and strategies for its supplies to replenish or recharge. Excessively pulling from this resource, especially in times of drought, creates land subsidence, or sinkage, and depletes natural resources.

Governor Newsom bolstered compliance with the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act, investing $1 billion and working with local communities to create 250 new groundwater sustainability agencies and 1,500 new groundwater projects.  Governor Newsom also advanced restoration of floodplains, habitat restoration, and buffer zones to protect watersheds through the Multibenefit Land Repurposing Program.

Restoring river flows and revitalizing habitat 

The Newsom administration, along with state, federal, and local leaders, developed the Healthy Rivers and Landscapes (HRL) Program as an innovative alternative approach to traditional regulatory requirements to improve environmental conditions while providing more water supply certainty to communities, farms, and businesses throughout California. The program, embraced by the State Water Resources Control Board, establishes an eight-year framework to improve the ecological health of the Bay-Delta – focusing on restoring habitats and targeted flows. This means more water in rivers from January to June and has already resulted in 45,000 acres of native fish habitat restored.

Building more water infrastructure, faster

Completing water infrastructure projects quickly is more important than ever. Through Governor Newsom’s streamlining efforts, the administration is working to mitigate future cost increases and prepare California for the new climate reality. The Governor’s Build More, Faster infrastructure agenda has cleared the way for $180 billion in infrastructure investments and accelerated projects by cutting red tape while preserving critical environmental protections.

During his administration, the Governor has advanced generational water infrastructure, including projects that:

• Move more water. The Delta Conveyance Project is vital to ensuring that California can continue to provide water to all of its residents through the State Water Project, which moves, and stores water used by 27 million people and 750,000 acres of farmland. During atmospheric rivers in 2024, the Delta Conveyance Project could have captured enough water for 9.8 million people’s yearly usage. The Governor’s efforts have moved the project closer to construction than ever before with the Delta Stewardship Council recently backing most of the project’s certification of consistency.

• Store more water. Sites Reservoir will capture water from the Sacramento River during wet seasons and store it for use during drier seasons – holding up to 1.5 million acre-feet of water, enough to supply over 4.5 million homes for a year. Through streamlining and significant investments, the Governor has done more to advance this project than any previous administration. California is also working to seismically retrofit San Luis Reservoir, which would add an additional 130,000 acre-feet of storage.

Restoring salmon populations

Salmon are profoundly important to California’s precious ecosystems and economy. They provide important commercial, recreational, economic, intrinsic and cultural benefits to fishing communities, California Native American tribes, and the entire state. California’s salmon populations are struggling to recover from years of drought, climate disruption, and other environmental and human-made challenges. California has taken significant and meaningful steps to rebuild salmon stocks across the state, including:

• Completing the largest river restoration project in American history with the removal of four dams along the Klamath River, in partnership with tribes. This reopened 400 miles of spawning habitat and for the first time in 100 years, the salmon are running again, and native plants are thriving.

• Launching California’s Salmon Strategy for a Hotter Drier Future in 2024, laying the groundwork to restore and rebuild salmon populations. The state released a progress report that shows that of the 71 action items outlined in the Salmon Strategy, nearly 70% are underway, with another 26% already completed.

What’s next

The science is clear: California faces intensifying weather whiplash and warming temperatures in the coming years and decades. The Governor outlined the road ahead:

• Diversify our water supplies: Expand water recycling, build well-placed desalination, capture more groundwater recharge, and more.
• Rehabilitate our backbone infrastructure: Finally implement Delta Conveyance and aqueduct repairs of the State Water Project.
• Manage water more nimbly: Water agencies need to manage more adaptively in real-time to navigate quickly changing conditions and capture water supplies when they come.
• Restore river health: Get more flows and habitat back into our rivers: for our fisheries, water quality, and recreation.
• Collaborate: Move beyond finger-pointing to shared solutions across watersheds and even states, which is the most durable way forward.